A very good set of the first five editions of Walton's 'Compleat Angler' came up for sale on December 1st at Messrs. Sotherby's, among the choice library of books on angling formed by the late Mr. Edward Snow, of Boston, Mass., U.S.A. These five editions were those which appeared during the lifetime of Izaak Walton, and the Snow copies are uniformly bound in olive morocco extra by F. Bedford. The set was knocked down to Messrs. Pickering and Chatto for £235. The Ashburnham set, unique as regards size and condition, realized £800 in May last, and some of the volumes possessed the further sentimental advantage of having the author's autograph notes written in them. The Snow copies were slightly "shaved" in some places, and some of the leaves in the first issue were defective, and the entire set was sold "not subject to return." A second copy of the second edition of the same work, with many of the headlines cut into, brought £19 15s., and three other copies of the third edition respectively sold for £12 10s., £35, and £11. Other angling books included an imperfect copy of 'The Secrets of Angling,' by John Dennys, 1652, £36. The total of the sale of 669 lots amounted to £1280.
Mr. F.T. Mott, of Crescent House, Leicester, has reprinted in pamphlet form two papers expressing his theories on the "Origin of Organic Colour," which were respectively contributed to 'Science,' and read at the Nottingham Meeting of the British Association in 1893. Mr. Mott predicates a "great concentrating wave of organic life in its progress towards an unknown climateric," as a result of which "the beauty of summer as we know it now, though it has never been paralleled in the past, will be as nothing to the blaze of brilliance which shall mark the summers of the future." "In the animal world brilliant colour is still comparatively rare, this branch of the organic wave being perhaps less advanced than that which rules the department of vegetation."
