THE GAME FISHES OF THE WORLD.*
True is a great book on sporting fish and fishing for sport, illustrated with many remarkable photographs. Dr. Holder, the anther, is a well-known authority on fishing in America; but in the present work he has tried, without complete success, to treat of the game fishes of the whole world. He has chapters not only on Europe, but on India, Africa, Australia, China, Japan, and the Sandwich Islands. It is, of course, inevitable that such a book should, to a great extent, be com- piled from the experiences and writings of others. But there are compilations of varying merit, and it is best to say at once that Dr. Holder's book might easily have been better had he taken more pains. Those portions which deal with the great sport at Santa Catalina Island, with the records of the Tuna Club (founded, as we all know, by Dr. Holder), with salmon fishing on the Pacific coast, with rainbow trout in their native haunts, with tarpon fishing at Aransas Pass, and other angling matters across the Atlantic contain so much that is interesting that it is unfortunate that Dr. Holder should open with three consecutive chapters. each inadequate and unsatisfactory, on British salmon, grayling, and trout. He describes the emotion of an American fisher- man plying his craft on the classic streams of Great Britain. His ancestors fished here in the time of Cromwell. Cromwell's army marched over the actual bridge where he is now fishing. We hope for some description of what ire thought of salmon fishing, or some facts about the salmon itself which might appeal to the angling reader of America. But the whole chapter contains little beyond trite generalities, a few weights and statistics, and some cuttings from the Fishing Gazette. Moreover, when Dr. Holder leaves California his chapters are full of small inaccuracies. " Gobis " is not the Latin name of the gudgeon, nor " Tunes" that of the tench ; Aelian did not describe the river "Astracus "; the anther of Wild Spain is not "Bush"; " Zander " is not the German name of the pike-perch. It is the same with his geography: • The Game Fishes of the World. By _Charles Frederick Holder, LL.D. London: Hodder sad fkosightos. [20s. oat.]
Baden is a part of Germany ; Fetter Lane is not in West- minater ; " Blagdon " is not a Surrey lake; "Niewporto" is not the usual name of the fishing-port near Ostend ; the Orkneys belong to Great Britain and not to Norway ; "John Bickerdyke's " book is not the "All Around Angler"; and so one might pick something from every few pages as one reads.
But let us leave fault-finding and turn to California and the Tuna Club of which Dr. Holder was the founder. The members are true sportsmen and not numerous. The sport at Santa Catalina is conducted under ideal and even luxurious con- ditions. Let us imagine that we are with Dr. Holder sitting comfortably in the chairs of Mexican Joe's launch. The sport, the size of the fish, the sunshine, the transparent clear- ness of the blue water are things that sea-anglers in this country can scarce imagine. If asked to indicate what is the finest big-game fish in the world, all things considered— strength, endurance, and spectacular effects—Dr. Holder would answer the swordfish. It outdoes the tarpon in leaping. There is a fine photograph of a morning's catch nine splendid monsters averaging 170 lb. each. Then there is the leaping tuna, which leaps, however, before and not after it has been hooked. Dr. Holder was the first to catch a big one on a sixteen-ounce rod with breaking limit to the line of 24 lb. This was in 1898. Next day he founded the Tuna Club. The biggest tuna ever taken with a rod and line weighed 680 lb. Unfortunately the monstrous ray or devil-fish of the Gulf of Mexico, which weighs over a ton and can tow fourteen or more boats behind it, has to be harpooned. Dr. Holder has a chapter on this sport. Among the biggest fish to take a bait are the Black Sea bass. He gives us an astounding photograph of a morning's catch—ten fish averaging 250 lb. apiece. After this yellow-tail, barracuda, and weakfish seem pygmies. This book contains many tables of the weights of each of these big species of fish, of the club records year by year, and some information on clubs, buttons, medals, pots, and prizes to be angled for. There is good reading in some of the chapters, and anglers who are not acquainted with Dr. Holder's earlier books on the subject will find a new sport revealed. But the much-wanted work on the game fishes of the world remains to be written. The author of it should be both an angler and a zoologist.
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