BRIGHT SALMON AND BROWN TROUT.

By Dana S. Lamb '21. Barre,Mass.: Barre Publishers, 1964. 111 pp.$10.00.

Most fishermen will read anything which comes their way about how to catch fish. The repetitious pattern of the articles in the popular sporting magazines attest to the popularity of the fishing theme - particularly when the emphasis in on the full creel and how and where to achieve this.

Dana Lamb's book, Bright Salmon andBrown Trout, is of a wholly different order and will be enjoyed as a first-rate addition to the literature of angling which has dealt with the many facets of the fishing experience other than the specific taking of fish.

This is a small, beautifully-printed book. Many of its short and engaging pieces are familiar to the author's fellow members of the New York Anglers' Club and the Atlantic Salmon Association, having been previously seen in the publications of these select anglers' groups. Mostly they are reminiscent and are written with ease and informality. There is a sensitive and observant response to the "increments" of angling those rich pleasures of the stream and the countryside. In "The Days Are Getting Longer," ". . . The fox now calls for the fox across the hillside in the dawn; beneath the rotting river ice the nymphs stir slightly in the silt," wherein the fisherman moodily senses the slow coming of spring. Or the tender reveries of the past in "The Old Man and the Map."

The few tales which are more fictional in character come off second best to the majority which are more substantially identified with the author's own experience. There is only an occasional lapse into the descriptive cliches of the sporting writer (i.e., "gin clear waters") which, however, does not mar an abundantly expressive and enlivening style of writing.

The foibles and the errant ways of the dedicated angler are not overlooked and are treated with a sly and understanding wit.

Dana Lamb is himself an experienced and skillful angler. Only modestly evident in this collection, he gives us a delightful little volume and one which will be deservedly welcome to any angler's library.

Artist-in-residence Emeritus