Introdtution xi. 



employed as the original medium of expression. Many 

 German, Italian, and French masters published prints, 

 the subjects of which were never painted, but were, so 

 to speak, created on the plate. Among such works are 

 some by Albert Diirer (who was born in 1471 and 

 founded the German school): "The Great Horse," "A 

 Knight on Horseback," and "Death's Horse" were 

 original engravings in the full sense of the word. 

 Rembrandt, John Fyt, Francis Snyders, and others 

 worked out some of their conceptions with the graver's 

 tool and not with the brush. 



If this book does anything to show lovers of field 

 sports and of animals, the horse in particular, how 

 greatly we are indebted to painters of byegone days 

 for our knowledge of our ancestors' sports, the object 

 with which it has been written is fulfilled. 



The old sporting publications to which such frequent 

 reference is made in the following pages are of the greatest 

 value and interest to the student of the historj' of sport. 

 Some little account of the " Sporting Magazine and its 

 Illustrated Contemporaries" will be found on pp. 254-5. 

 In all there were about 234 volumes of these, the original 

 being the Sporting Magazine, which commenced in 1792 

 and ceased in 1S70. The lives of the publications which 

 at various times sprang up in what proved a hopeless 

 endeavour to rival or eclipse it were comparatively brief. 

 The New Sporting Magazine, founded in 1S31, and the 

 Sportsiiuzn, founded in 1833, were merged in the Sporting 

 Review, founded in 1839, which in its turn was absorbed 

 by the Sporting Magazine in 1848. 



ElsenJiam, June, 1900. 



