A HANDBOOK OF ANGLING: TEACHING FLY-FISHING, TROLLING, BOTTOM-FISHING, AND SALMON FISHING; WITH THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RIVER FISH, AND THE BEST MODES OF CATCHING THEM. By Ephemera. Fourth edition.

(1847) 1865 4th edition. 12mo (110 x 178mm). Ppviii,312 + 32pp ads. B/w frontispiece of salmon flies, text engravings. Decoratively blind-stamped green cloth, spine titled in gilt, brown coated end-papers.

Third edition, considerably revised. In the author's preface he states "I have, I think, improved the general style of the volume; excised repetitions, rejected incorrect instruction, unsound suggestion, opinion, and advice, and replaced them by accurate information and counsel. The list of trout-flies I have shortened and simplified, and given no fancy patterns. ...The natural history of salmon I have re-written. ...The list of salmon-flies for the best rivers in the British Isles I have remodelled after the best specimens in that gallery of ideal insect beauties which I painted for The Book of the Salmon." Chapters on artificial flies; their dressing and use, together with monthly lists of recommended flies for both trout and salmon; trolling tackle and techniques; bottom fishing; piscatorial physiology by Erasmus Wilson, F.R.S; and the habits of freshwater fish. Though the book includes sections on bottom fishing, the author most definitely favours the fly and includes a section on "The superiority and merits of fly-fishing." He does, however, still have time for the coarse fish except, perhaps, the carp of which he says "The yellowish olive carp stands at the head of a very numerous family, giving, in my opinion, no very honourable name to them. They are just as bad a race as the salmon tribe are excellent. ...Neither I nor anyone else can tell you how to catch satisfactorily with the angle the pater familias of the carp; he is so sly, and nibbles in such a namby-pamby way, that he strips the hook of its bait mouse-like."