xxiv INTRODUCTION 



quarry, all-important when the object was game, and hardly less 

 essential when the purpose was securing some relic of the vermin in 

 order to obtain the reward premiums being placed on the heads of 

 wolves and tails of foxes. 



Up to the time of William the Conqueror all classes of the com- 

 munity appear to have vied with each other in chasing and killing 

 wild food-supplying animals and birds as distinguished from the 

 domesticated, and this not only on cultivated land but in the forest, 

 which had become so much encroached upon and brought into culti- 

 vation as to interfere with the chase. From that time dates 'the 

 distinction between the qualified and unqualified sportsman, the 

 former retaining hold on the wild food-supplying denizens of the 

 British Islands by Forest Laws passing into Game Laws and Wild 

 Birds' Protection Acts ; and the latter in all time up to the present 

 evading and breaking legislative enactments from a sense of right 

 inherent in Anglo-Saxon blood to partake of the advantages be- 

 stowed by nature. The first implies the culture called sporting, 

 and the latter the non-cultivation, termed poaching. 



By the Forest Laws and Game Laws two kinds of sporting were 

 made feasible, viz. stag-hunting, hare-hunting, greyhound coursing, 

 and falconry all diverting and food-supplying pastimes ; fox- 

 hunting, otter-hunting, and other exploits by canine or engine- 

 means in capturing and destroying vermin. The inference from 

 these two opposites is that of sporting being ingrained in man, 

 and as keenly appealing to one class of persons as to another 

 without regard to sentimentalism. Game, therefore, must be pro- 

 tected and preserved, while vermin is also tolerated in co-relative 

 degree, otherwise the life is taken out of sporting, and a national 

 feature defunct. 



FISHING, like sporting, was no doubt first had recourse to as 

 a food-supplying diversion, the exercise of brain and muscle being 

 mind-invigorating as well as the catch body-sustaining. The angler, 

 anxious to secure trout or salmon, loses no opportunity of trawling 

 for pike, while the fisherman spares not the water and land verte- 

 brates that prejudice the success of his nets, well-baited hooks, and 

 traps. There are two sides to the fishing culture, viz. the food 

 product, and the militating against that produce by depredations 

 creatures of water and of land. The water-ponds and lakes, brooks 

 and rivers, extend over 2,974,739 acres of the United Kingdom 

 area, and are all more or less replete with finny denizens providing 

 diversion to leisured persons ; affording relaxation and exercise of 

 skill, patience, and effort to individuals engaged in industrial 

 pursuits, with relatively little spare time, and no little amusement, 

 with some profit of mind and body to the rising generation. 



The fisheries, or rather the fish in the water, interfere with no 

 land culture, but certain members of the ground and winged land 



