WHAT ANGLERS MAY SEE.*
" WE can be far from the madding crowd," says the author of The Riverside Naturalist (" we" meaning the angler), "yet. in the midst of living beings. Rest for a moment on that old fallen tree, strip of a piece of the bark, it will be found to be teeming with life. Sit on that old boulder—relic, maybe, of the glacier age—now covered with moss and lichen, and turn over the dead leaves at your feet ; beetles and other insects of various forms and hues will scuttle away to seek some fresh hiding-place. Cast your eyes upwards; the air is peopled with winged creatures, the trees and hedgerows resound with hum of bees and voice of birds." Then the author invites us to accompany him along the riverside, and profit by the long results of his close observation of the teeming life of the land that lies in the vicinity of water. We may know a good deal of the subject, or we may be of the number of those to whom he refers with gentle rebuke as per- sons who do not " know the difference between what is called the water-rat and the rat of the barn or corn-stack—between the weasel and the stoat—the field-mouse and the house-mouse ;" it does not matter, what we do not know he teaches, what we do know he adorns. Likewise, he corrects certain popular errors • Tho Riverside Naturalist. By Edward Hamilton, M.D., F.L.B., London : Sampson Low and Co. which are fraught with danger to the objects of them ; as, for instance, the rapacity of the water-rat (sweetly sung by William Howitt and " Calverley ; " both evidently aware of the maligned creature's innocence), which is not a rat at all, but a water-vole, and so far from meriting to be classed as a. destroyer of fish with the otter and the cormorant, as Izaak Walton classes him, is a rigid vegetarian. It is also a beauti- ful little creature, with a seal-like, not a rat-like bead, and soft, glossy fur, which takes reflections from the general tint of its surroundings so readily that it is rarely to be caught sight of. Do not persecute the otter, says Mr. Hamilton, for he is the trout-angler's friend. Does he not eat up the eels and the small jack which eat up the trout, and so decrease the angler's chances of catching and eating them up himself ? Again, it is a gross libel upon the otter to charge him with a vast destruction of salmon ; he likes flounders and crayfish much better, he merely tastes salmon as an experiment ; and the story of the favourite bit out of the silver-scaled shoulder of the king of the river is a slander, the real de- linquent being the true water-rat. " Indeed," says the author, " Troughton, the huntsman to the Kendal hounds, told me that one otter he kept in captivity enjoyed a young rabbit for a meal as much as anything." The weasel is related to the otter, but somehow he is not interesting; he is mean, or we have come to think him so, because such very mean " humans " have been likened to him, to his opprobrium. Nevertheless, Dr. Hamilton puts in a plea for the weasel also. Don't ex- terminate him, he says, for " this little animal does more good than harm to the farmer by destroying a great number of rats and mice in the corn-stacks." The gamekeeper, who has only sport to consider, not utility, is not to be moved, we fancy, by the argument that young pheasants are not the weasel's "regular food," but only the pia alter of its hunger. After a rat that is not a rat, comes a mouse that is not a mouse, and has a curious superstition attached to it. This is the shrew- mouse, in reality a sores, and only like mus in colour,— a pretty, harmless little animal, which used to be considered a very pernicious creature, causing paralysis by merely running over the limbs of man or beast. It is a pugnacious person, and rarely seen alive, but found in autumn, lying dead on gravel- walks and in fields, in considerable numbers. Dr. Hamilton has much to tell of bats, and finds it hard to understand why people do not like them, some even shuddering if one swoops by. Is it not because they are so sudden in their flight, coming upon one in the twilight with as little " previousness " as the imminent bicycle ? What charming names the creatures have ! Noctnle and Pipistrelle, being night-bat and flitter- mouse, and how pleasantly Mr. Bell, in his British Quadrupeds, quoted by the author, wonders especially that Pipistrelle, with its russet fur, its leathery wings, and its "very wee eyes," should be so mixed up with superstition and mystery, for it is " a harmless little creature, whose habits are at once innocent and amusing, and its time of appearance and activity is that when everything around would lead the mind to tranquillity and peace." Barbastelle, too, is a charming bat, although one may not think so, with its big, acute ears, and its desultory flight, so confident of human harmlessness that it will flatter its wings close enough to fan one's cheek. Pipistrelle is easily tamed, and becomes attached to those who feed him, " often taking a fly from the lips."
Mr. Oswald Crawfurd has made us envious by his de- scription of the Portuguese kingfisher and its abounding numbers, for here that most beautiful of our riverside birds is becoming scarcer every year, being persecuted for its plumage by the purveyors of fashion, and by the trout-breeders on account of its partiality for small trout. Dr. Hamilton earnestly pleads the cause of this resplendent bird, to which the beautiful myth of Alcyone is attached, declaring that the "comfortable bird," sung by Drayton and Keats, does an immense amount of good by destroying vast numbers of the greatest enemies to the young trout, and cannot harm a trout- river. Truly, he of the Riverside is a kindly naturalist, of a "live-and-let-live" way of thinking, who, like Izaak Walton, " loves to kill nothing but fish." He dwells long and lovingly upon the riverside song-birds, so constantly heard, so rarely seen; the sedge-warbler, accompanying the angler all day long, with his short, babbling song, sometimes espied as it moves up the stems or perches on the top of a flag, but dis- appearing at any quick movement, though not in the least afraid ; the reed-warbler, or " bustling bird," which builds a beautiful nest in the reed-stems, and sings most sweetly at night in calm, close weather ; and the bearded titmouse, hardly ever seen, with black moustache, pinkish sides, fawn- coloured back, wings, and tail, the head dark slate-colour, and the wing-covert grey. When you get a chance, "watch him," says the author, "how he creeps up the stems of the reeds, sometime head downwards, always on the alert—a. lovely bird indeed." Then he tells us of the coot, foully libelled by Drayton as " the brainbald coot, a formal, witless ass," and by Skelton as " the mad coot," for it is the moat wary of birds, a heaven-sent sentinel among the feathered creatures, "a splendid diver," and wonderfully clever at self- defence. Sir Thomas Browne, of Norwich, where coots still
abound on the Broads, writing of them in 1635, says : " Upon the appearance of a kite or buzzard I have seen them unite from all parts of the shore in strange numbers, when, if the kite stoop near them, they will fling up and spread such a flash of water with their wings, that they will endanger the
kite and so keep him off again and again in open opposition." Again, William Howitt knew better than the older poets, or the makers of the sayings, " As bald as a coot," " As mad as a coot;" for one of the beat of his sketches of natural history is that which begins :-
" 0 Coot, oh, bold adventurous Coot, I pray thee tell to me,
The perils of that stormy time That bore thee to the sea!"
We can give but a meagre sketch of Dr. Hamilton's delight- ful book ; perhaps its most alluring subjects are the song- birds and the swans. Our variety of the bird of Apollo is the mute swan, and was introduced into this country from its native isle of Cyprus. Was it sent to their English houses by the Knights of St. John, who then owned the island F The author groups many poetical tributes around the in- comparable form of " the stately sailing swan." Of the owl, the hawk, the jackdaw, and the jay, he has as many
things to tell ; and a short chapter on the rook has even more than the usual interest that attaches to that idling and engrossing bird. To the Dor-Hawk, or night-jar, so called from the sudden jarring snap it makes in the air, is the subject of a particularly interesting sketch. The Dor-Hawk, too, is a maligned bird, accused of goat-sucking and many evil practices, all purely mythical, for it lives on beetles, chiefly Shakespeare's beetle, the " shardborne." The author tells us there is a curious superstition in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, that these birds embody the souls of unbaptised infants doomed to wander for ever in the air, and are called " Gabble-Ratchets " —i.e., " Corpse-Honnde "—a name equivalent to the " Gabriel Hounds" of other localities, the unseen pack which is heard by night baying in the air ; hence the Shropshire term for the
bird, " Uchfowl," or " Corpse-Fowl."
Of fishes Dr. Hamilton discourses con amore, and manages to make even eels interesting ; he is naturally great upon the riverside reptilia and insect-life, and introduces us to one
particularly fascinating beetle, known as the " Coach- Horse." This charming book, enriched v the author's delicate fancy, and adorned by poetical a 'ctorial aid, closes with a chapter on "Riverside Flo which will dwell with his readers, and from hencefo beautify every riparian scene for them.
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