JAMES RENNIE, A.M. PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. EDINBURGH: PUBLISHED, FOR THE PROPRIETORS, BY W. & R. CHAMBERS, EDINBURGH; W. ORR, LONDON, MDCCCXXXIII. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EDITION PUBLISHED BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS, 1760. THE Complete Angler having been written so long ago as 1653, although the last publication thereof in the lifetime of the Author was in 1676, contains many particulars of persons now but little known, and frequent allusions to facts, and even modes of living, the memory whereof is in a great measure obliterated: a new edition, therefore, seemed to require a retrospect to the time when the Authors lived, an explanation of such passages as an interval of more than a hundred years had necessarily rendered obscure, together with such improvements in the art itself as the accumulated experience of succeeding times has enabled us to furnish. An Edition, undertaken with this view, is now attempted, and in a way, it is to be hoped, that may once again introduce the Authors to the acquaintance of persons of learning and judgment. All that the Editor requests, in return for the pains he has taken, is, that the reader will do him the justice to believe that his only motives for the republication of this work were, a desire to perpetuate the memory of a meek, benevolent, pious man, and to contribute something to the improvement of an art of which he professes himself a lover. Twickenham, April 10, 1760. [The Notes to this edition by Professor Rennie, consisting chiefly of the correction of the errors of the original in Natural History, are marked by his initials, J. R.] |