NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 189 
His Grace of Beaufort to increase the popularity of field sports 
in this country by the publication of an instructive series of 
manuals undertaken by specialists in every branch of sport. 
Three volumes of this series are now before us, one on 
Hunting, and two on Fishing, by the authors whose names are 
above mentioned, and we understand that, amongst others in 
preparation, is a volume on Game-shooting by Lord Walsingham, 
and another on Wildfowl-shooting by Sir R. Payne Gallwey. 
It augurs well, we think, for the interests of sportsmen generally 
when proficients such as these are willing to become authors 
and impart information on subjects upon which, from personal 
knowledge and experience, they are so well qualified to write. 
We have often had occasion to remark upon the intimate 
connection between Field Sports and Natural History, a sports- 
man’s success in many cases depending upon his knowledge of 
the haunts and habits of the wild creatures he pursues. We 
shall, in this notice of the volumes before us, consider their 
merits chiefly from the naturalist’s point of view, avoiding the 
technicalities of sport as being less suited for discussion in this 
journal. E 
The volume on Hunting appropriately commences with a 
chapter on the history and literature of the chase, but, although 
very agreeably written, it falls far short, in our opinion, of what 
such a chapter ought to be. In the first place, the historical 
notices are not given in chronological sequence ; for example, 
after glancing at the Book of St, Albans (1486), and the Treatises 
of Turbervile (1575), and Cockaine (1591), we are carried back 
to the days of Canute and Edward the Confessor, when the 
important forest laws of the former and hunting proclivities of 
the latter are disposed of in about a dozen lines! In the next 
place, there are some extraordinary gaps in this “ history,” 
notably the omission to give any information respecting Hunting 
in the days of James the First, who spent more time in the 
hunting field than in the council chamber. This oversight is 
the more remarkable, because the events of that monarch’s reign, 
as we have already hinted, have an important bearing on the 
history of the chase in England, and ample materials of much 
interest to sportsmen are available for a chapter on the subject, 
and along chapter, too. Nor is anything said of the influence 
which the French and Italian Schools of Hunting exercised 
