Angling in Many Lands My Rod, My Comfort. By Sir
Robert Bruce Lockhart. With Wood Engravings by J. Gaastra. (Dropmore Press. Limited Edition. £5 5s. Od. and £2 2s. Od.) SIR ROBERT BRUCE LOCKHART has had an advantage over some of his fellow-anglers in that his career has enabled him to fish in many lands. Thus, though his boyhood waters flowed through a Scottish battlefield where the peat-cutters used to discover old cannon-balls and claymores in the turf, he has also fished in such places as Russia, Germany, Austria, Malaya and the Balkans. It is therefore disappointing that with all this rich material at hand he has made his fishing autobiography so short, though at first sight its brevity is concealed in the sumptuousness of its presentation. Glimpses of what the author might have given more generously are seen in descriptions of a Bavarian stream, the Semt, "a dry-fly river not unlike our Hampshire chalk-streams, but set in more majestic sur- roundings," and of the Slovenian Krka, "a fairy stream in a land of dreams."
The writer avoids those controversies which often fret even the contemplative brotherhood of fishermen ; he has a good word to say for coarse and for sea fishing ; and maintains that the wet-fly angler, who has fished from boyhood and knows instinctively the ways of trout, can easily make himself a successful exponent of dry- fly methods. Mr. Gaastra's wood engravings are bold in their conception and are distinctive, but it is debatable whether this type 9f illustration is really the best medium of expression for the fishing Scene. Fishing is such a tranquil pastime that any sudden arrest of the eye is apt to destroy the harmony of water with its background
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