erica. His accomplishments are
as various as his talents. He can paint a landscape as sweetly as
he can describe it in words. He is a sportsman of eager impulse, and
relishes equally well the employments of the fisherman and hunter.
He is a naturalist, as well as a sportsman, and brings, to aid his
practice and experience, a large knowledge, from study, of the habits
of birds, beasts and fishes. He roves land and sea in this pursuit,
forest and river, and turns, with equal ease and readiness, from
a close examination of Greek and Roman literature, to an emulous
exercise of all the arts which have afforded renown to the aboriginal
hunter. The volume before us--one of many which he has given to this
subject--is one of singular interest to the lover of the rod and
angle. It exhibits, on every page, a large personal knowledge of
the finny tribes in all the northern portions of our country, and
well deserves the examination of those who enjoy such pursuits and
pastimes. The author's pencil has happily illustrated the labors of
his pen. His portraits of the several fishes of the United States are
exquisitely well done and truthful. It is our hope, in future pages,
to furnish an ample review of this, and other interesting volumes, of
similar character, from the hand of our author. We have drawn to them
the attention of some rarely endowed persons of our own region, who,
like our author, unite the qualities of the writer and the sportsman;
from whom we look to learn in what respects the habits and characters
of northern fish differ from our own, and thus supply the deficiency
of the work before us. The title of this work is rather too general.
The author's knowledge of the fish, and of fishing, in the United
States, is almost wholly confined to the regions north of the
Chesapeake, and he falls into the error, quite too common to the
North, of supposing this region to be the whole country. Another
each volume as that before us will be necessary to do justice to the
Southern States, whose possessions, in the finny tribes of sea and
river, are of a sort to shame into comparative insignificance all the
boasted treasures of the North. It would need but few pages in our
review, from the proper hands, to render this very apparent to the
reader. Meanwhile, we exhort him to seek the book of Mr. Herbert, as a
work of much interest and authority, so far as it goes."

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MR. PUTNAM is preparing some