A Book on Angling. By Francis Francis. (Lougmans.)—The object of
Mr. Francis in writing this book has been to condense into one. volume the fullest and most varied information on every branch of angling. He has been collecting his materials during the last twenty years, and the result is, on the whole, satisfactory. Bottom-fishing, fly-fishing, and spinning, the hooks to be used for pike, and the gay colours that are to attract trout and salmon, all have their :operate chapters, and some of them are pictorially elucidated. Mr. Franois Is rather too fond of bad puns, but he writes easily, and in a style that will take with the large fish-loving public. His descriptions of a shoal of perch collecting round a worm, and carefully avoiding the barb of the hook which runs through RI of the pike standing up on its tail, grinning at the fisherman and shaking the hook out of its jaws ; and of the way in which he circumvented a large trout in the Duke of Rutland'a water, to the astonishment of the Duke's keeper, relieve the more technical parts of the book, and insure its popularity. We cannot say whether old-established anglers will obey his precepts, for anglers are generally rooted to their own traditions. It is not likely that any will adopt the Chinese plan of fishing with a diver who is sent down to creek the caging of shell-fish, so as to entice other fish to feed on them. When the other- fish come, the diver selects a large one, and puts the hook into its mouth, when the fisherman above pulls it up.
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