The main teaching of this book, and which will attract our readers, is how to observe the life-histories of fishes. We have excellent field-ornithologists who have acquired their knowledge direct from nature, but how few have directed the same attention to freshwater fishes. In a moderately deep stream it is not so easy to decide always whether a fish is a Trout or a Grayling. But here a knowledge of habits will decide the question. A Trout can keep still, a Grayling cannot. "The rough tests are size for Salmon, immobility for Trout, mobility for Grayling." If any one wants to know if there are Tench in a pool, "let him go and sit beside it some warm evening in June, just before it is dark, and then, if he hears a splashing among the water-plants, and sees the leaves disturbed, he can rest quite certain that there are Tench in the pool, and that they are spawning." And many other hints to the observer in a little-worked study is afforded, which should render a stream as full of interest as a wood, and prove that a knowledge of the habits of our fishes is not confined alone to a capacity for hooking them. We all know how an overhanging or adjacent tree or bush affords an insect banquet to a crowd of fishes in the stream. Mr. Bund gives a very practical example. "A stream comes down from the Welsh hills, which are open, bare, and uncultivated. A large larch plantation has been made. Above the plantation the Trout average seven to the pound; below they average five, and the difference in my opinion is entirely due to the quantity of food the plantation turns out into the river."
No one who wishes to successfully manage a fishery can afford to be without a precise knowledge of the habits and life-histories of fishes. This knowledge is seldom cultivated by angling preservationists. The writer of this notice, who in earlier days mixed much with anglers and pursued the craft, always found that he belonged to a brotherhood that knew how to catch, but was no match in real natural history of the subject with the village poacher, a worthy whose detested success is based on practical observation. Mr. Bund's book, besides detailing the secrets of Fishery Management, gives much information on a subject which is strikingly absent from 'The Zoologist' "Notes and Queries."
