well the employments of the fisherman and hunter.  He is a naturalist, as well as a sportsman, and brings, to aid his practice and experience, a large knowledge, from study, of the habits of birds, beasts and fishes.  He roves land and sea in this pursuit, forest and river, and turns, with equal ease and readiness, from a close examination of Greek and Roman literature, to an emulous exercise of all the arts which have afforded renown to the aboriginal hunter.  The volume before us—­one of many which he has given to this subject—­is one of singular interest to the lover of the rod and angle.  It exhibits, on every page, a large personal knowledge of the finny tribes in all the northern portions of our country, and well deserves the examination of those who enjoy such pursuits and pastimes.  The author’s pencil has happily illustrated the labors of his pen.  His portraits of the several fishes of the United States are exquisitely well done and truthful.  It is our hope, in future pages, to furnish an ample review of this, and other interesting volumes, of similar character, from the hand of our author.  We have drawn to them the attention of some rarely endowed persons of our own region, who, like our author, unite the qualities of the writer and the sportsman; from whom we look to learn in what respects the habits and characters of northern fish differ from our own, and thus supply the deficiency of the work before us.  The title of this work is rather too general.  The author’s knowledge of the fish, and of fishing, in the United States, is almost wholly confined to the regions north of the Chesapeake, and he falls into the error, quite too common to the North, of supposing this region to be the whole country.  Another each volume as that before us will be necessary to do justice to the Southern States, whose possessions, in the finny tribes of sea and river, are of a sort to shame into comparative insignificance all the boasted treasures of the North.  It would need but few pages in our review, from the proper hands, to render this very apparent to the reader.  Meanwhile, we exhort him to seek the book of Mr. Herbert, as a work of much interest and authority, so far as it goes.”

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MR. PUTNAM is preparing some elegantly embellished works for the holiday season.  Among others, an edition, in octavo, of Miss Fenimore Cooper’s charming Rural Hours, embellished by twenty finely-colored drawings of birds and flowers; The Picturesque Souvenir, or Letters of a Traveler in Europe and America, by Bryant, embellished by a series of finely-executed engravings; and The Alhambra, by Washington Irving, with designs by Darley, uniform with the splendid series of Mr. Irving’s Illustrated Works, some time in course of publication.  We have also seen a specimen copy of a superbly illustrated edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress, printed on cream-colored paper, as smooth as ivory; and the