4 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. 



ture in Europe. And so, for that reason too, 

 these old books have a very modern application. 

 And that is not all. As the year revolves your 

 thoughts will turn to other pursuits, and you 

 may possibly take down from your shelves the 

 great Peter Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting, 

 or perhaps Peter Hawker's Instructions to 

 Young Sportsmen : though I admit that it is 

 more probable that what you read will be the 

 newest of the new books on either sport. But 

 whichever be the case, you are reading some- 

 thing which is rooted in the past and which 

 would not take the form it does were it not that 

 old writers centuries ago had written books now 

 well nigh forgotten. So, in order that you may 

 never forget that all sport is one, whatever be 

 its manifestation, and that in particular the 

 fishing book which you may buy to-morrow has 

 an old and reputable ancestry, it is worth 

 spending a little time even in a period so remote 

 as the Middle Ages. So let us look at two or 

 three of these early books. 



The earliest book on the chase, in France or 

 England, and an instructive and delightful 

 book it is. La Chace dou Serf, dates from the 

 middle of the thirteenth century. Appearing 

 at a time when French prose had not long 

 emerged, it is, as might be expected, written 

 in verse. It may possibly have influenced a 

 later work, for these early writers copied freely 

 from each other, and to understand them it is 

 often necessary to go back to their predecessors. 



