RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ANGLER.
Seventy Years' risking. By Charles George Barrington, C.B. With a Frontispiece. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 10s. 6d.)—Mr. Barrington's first remembrance of fishing goes back to Cassiobury, where he saw his father catch trout with a fly when upon a visit to Lord Essex. The little boy could not imagine how they were caught, and an old sailor servant, who loved a joke, assured him that the way to do it was to wait until the trout put up their heads, then throw a running knot over and haul taut. This tale he believed, and when he went to school he happened one day to remark that the best way to catch trout was to throw a noose over them when they came to the top of the water as he had seen his father do. For this credulity he was severely punished, for an older boy called him a d—d young liar and thrashed him with a cricket stump. Lord Grey, of the Reform Bill, was Mr. Barrington's grandfather, and it was at Howick when only eight years old that he caught his first trout. Since then much of the leisure of a long life in a Government office has been devoted to fishing. Mr. Barrington has made the most of his opportunities, and the best fishing in these islands has been open to him. His memories of Floors and the Duke of Roxburghe, of Broadlands and Lord Palmerston, of Panshanger and Lord Cowper, and a dozen other well-known waters on which it has been his good fortune to fish for salmon and for trout, will be read with interest. Having learnt the art of trout-fishing on the streams of Northumberland, and ended as a member of the Itchen Club, he is able to express an opinion on the wet and dry fly methods. It is a satisfac- tion to find that he is not one of those pedants who think that• chalk-stream trout are only to be caught with a dry-fly. There are days when a sunk fly is more effective and others when a floating fly is more successful. It depends, as common-sense and experience tell us, upon whether the fish are feeding at the surface or below it. Besides the accounts of many fishing expedi- tions to all parts of the United Kingdom, there is an excellent chapter on the Din at Weimar; others, also interesting, on artificial breeding, poaching, fishing clubs, and on the Royal Commission on salmon fisheries. Mr. Barrington says what he has to say in a plain manner. His account of his sport is not descriptive; he does not attempt to convey to brother-anglers the emotions he presumably felt ; he seems indifferent to the beauties of Nature,
and seldom mentions the weather or other surroundings. His whole mind is intent on the angler's art, and the best means of killing his fish. Yet he has many anecdotes of people and recol- lections of wonderful sport to tell; and the book he has written will not fail to amuse other anglers, and perhaps to fill some with envy.
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