PRELIMINARY 



By the RIGHT HON. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART. 



MANY years ago a writer in one of the journals devoted to 

 field sports launched a proposal in all seriousness for 

 the institution of a Council of Sport which should be 

 empowered to confer degrees and decorations upon per- 

 sons who had proved their prowess in various branches 

 of pursuit. Happily the scheme got no further than the 

 proposal, for one can conceive nothing more detrimental to field sports 

 than that they should acquire the character of a business or profession. 

 As it is, except foxhunting and cricket, all the principal field sports and 

 games have suffered from the pernicious influence of record-breaking. 

 Racing and coursing are in their very nature competitive ; but there is no 

 surer method of vulgarizing game-shooting and fishing, and robbing them 

 of half their fascination, than making them the subject of competition. 

 Some measure of emulation, indeed, must be allowed to give zest to the 

 sport; but the love of excellence for its own sake ought never to degenerate 

 into a mere effort to excel others, and I know of no more sorrowful travesty 

 of the contemplative man's recreation than the members of an angling 

 club competing for stakes and prizes. 



I forget the full list of achievements which the writer abovementioned 

 prescribed as necessary to entitle one to claim a sportsman's degree and 

 don the badge to be conferred by the Council of Sport; but I remember 

 that any one aspiring to these distinctions was to present a certificate that, 

 among other feats, he had shot a royal stag and landed a 20 lb. salmon. 

 I suppose, therefore, that although most anglers are entered to the craft by 

 the capture of some humbler quarry, a writer on angling should begin at 

 the other end and assign the first place to Salmo salar. 



That, however, must not be assumed to imply that salmon fishing is the 

 most difficult branch of the art of angling. Far from it. Much greater skill 

 and more delicate manipulation are called for in expiscating a 2 lb. trout 

 from the tranquil Itchen than in inducing a spring salmon of fifteen times 

 that weight to take a three -inch fly in the darkling Tay or turbulent Spey. 

 Luck is reduced to its minimum in chalk-stream fishing ; in salmon-fishing 

 it is a most potent and ever-present factor. Let the novice once acquire the 

 knack enabling him to project his lure to a moderate distance over the place 



B 1 



