INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 5 



World ; a sport, so far as it is one here at all, perfectly 

 identical on the two sides of the Atlantic, and as such, 

 having no peculiarities, and requiring no new precepts 

 here ; and, above all, being a sport on which more able 

 and excellent treatises have been written than on any 

 other in the whole range of sporting subjects, and that by 

 such men as Beckford and Nimrod — names as familiar as 

 household words to all who can sit a horse or halloo to a 

 hound —it would have been an act, if not of impertinence, 

 at least of total supererogation, to fill up the pages of a 

 work devoted to a new class of subjects, with trite remarks 

 on an old one, or with quotations from books within the 

 reach of every sportsman. 



All this which I have here set down in relation to my 

 work on Field Sports, and to some strictures which have 

 been made upon it, is simply explanatory of my intentions 

 with regard to this work. 



These are to furnish what information I can in relation 

 to the classes, migrations, habits, breeding seasons, and the 

 modes of taking, of those which I call and consider Sport- 

 ing or Game Fishes ; to insist on the generic distinctions, 

 and the true names and definitions of the various species 

 and families ; to show briefly how the various families and 

 classes may be distinguished one from the other, thereby 

 enabling sportsmen to avoid the constant errors and 

 blunders into which they are now falling in the confusion 



