8 Introduction. 



in our tongue likewise devoted to a princely pastime, 

 there are no English writers upon sport with firearms 

 until late in the seventeenth century. Pablo del Fucar 

 and Erasmo di Yalvasone had both treated of the use of 

 firearms for sporting purposes in the sixteenth century ; 

 Tamariz de la Escaler and Vita Bonfadini had written 

 treatises on the art of wing shooting long before Blome 

 produced his great tome and taught how to creep within 

 range of jugging partridges and pot them unawares. 



The " Maison Rustique" was the precursor of the country 

 encyclopaedia, of which Blome's book was a fair specimen, 

 and a variety of which is still with us, even to-day 

 " British Rural Sports " is on the railway bookstalls, but 

 these early compilations were far from being the thorough 

 works modern encyclopaedias have become, now that each 

 article is contributed by an expert and constitutes not 

 seldom the best monograph extant on the subject treated. 

 The early cyclopaedias were put together by the publisher's 

 hack, and the student in search of original facts and reliable 

 information will do well to avoid them and choose some of 

 the less pretentious publications. 



The poets have contributed not a few lines to fii-earms. 

 The epic on the chase was a favourite essay for Italian 

 writers. It was a congenial theme with the much -satirised 

 poet laureate Pye ; and though his verse is far from 

 approaching in interest the better known " Chace " of W. 

 Somerville, he is far from being the worst author of metrical 

 lines on shooting. Watts wrote facetiously, and Aldington 

 heavily and seriously ; Francis Fawkes and K. McLemon 

 have not made their names immortal by their poems on 

 sport with the gun ; but, notwithstanding their example 

 and lack of success, verse on the subject is still being 

 produced. 



An important class of authors has been recruited from 



