Lot 531
Salmon Fishing--Bund, J.W. Willis
Rare Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: 10 January 2007 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Salmon Problems. London: Sampson, 1885, first edition, thick 4to, the author's interleaved copy with copious notes, revisions, additions and supplementary material, probably amassed with a view to a second edition, extensively extra-illustrated with original pen and ink sketches, lithograph plates, articles, tables, autograph letters, and a photograph, contemporary maroon morocco, extremities slightly rubbed
Footnote
Note: Correspondence includes letters from Scott F. Surtees (referring to Frank Buckland), 3 from Francis Day (author of The Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland), some with sketches, Robert Hawes (discussing salmon fishing on the Lyn), John Andersson (discussing fishing on the Tay, Tweed & other rivers), manuscript notes, records and charts of salmon sizes, catches on the River Tweed from 1808-74 and other rivers, migrations, notes on the effects of pollution and dry weather, dams, weirs, fry, large salmon Tweed reports; printed reports & other material from the Fisheries Preservation Association and Board of Trade (Fisheries department), lithographed maps, printed graph showing yearly catches of salmon by rod and line from 1867-1885, articles from The Fishing Gazette, The Field, The Times, The Scotsman &c. Loosely inserted are various pamphlets, including Day, F. Observations on British Salmones. I Trout; On Races and Hybrids among the Salmonidae, 4 parts in wrappers; Fish Farming in Surrey; Migration of the Salmonidae, 2 parts; two manuscript reports to the Severn Fishery Board, 10pp., 1886; numerous newspaper clippings and cuttings relating to salmon, manuscript copy of Home Office letter regarding the salmon on the Taw and Torridge, 4pp., 1886, manuscript diagram showing the number of boxes of salmon sent to Billingsgate market from Scotland in 1885; manuscript notes, drawings and measurements of fish at Llandduri, &c.
Willis Bund was Chairman of the Severn Fishery Board and a leading authority on salmon and salmon fishing. In response to Willis Bund's book the Fisheries Preservation Association initiated a programme to collect reliable information on the salmon fisheries "with the assistance of the Fishery boards, Angling Societies and Fishermen generally". Many of Willis Bund's notes and additions record the observations stemming from his extensive correspondence with anglers throughout the UK and Ireland.
Provenance: John William Willis Bund; H.C.M. Proctor, armorial bookplates.