Shooting : its Appliances, Practice, and Purpose. By James Dalziel
Dougall, F.S.A. F.Z.S. (Sampson Low and Co.)—This book is more precisely described as a "Treatise on the Art of Shooting." It will have more interest for proficients in the "art" than for students of it. In fact we hardly see the advantage of so elaborate and careful a work on this subject ; it even includes a list of the vermin destroyed in three years on Glengarry, Inverness-shire, the " 198 wild cats, 246 martin- oats, 106 polo-cats, 78 house-cats going wild," and so on. We can appreciate, if we do not share, the enthusiasm of "Nimrod "and the "Old Shekarry," and the relation of sporting anecdotes over warm fires may excite the interest, if they do not stir the blood, of indolent reviewers, but we fear that the only folk at all likely properly to reward Mr. Dougall's pains are those who have no need of a treatise, and to whom -one may be rather a bore. We think that the motto from Marlowe on the title-page is singularly inappropriate to shooting :—
" First, I'll instruct thee in the rudiments,
And then thou wilt be perfecter than I."
Like a poet, a sportsman is born, not made, and the last line of the couplet must be a quip modest on Mr. Dongall's part. Apart from the subject-matter proper of his book, the author exhibits a good deal of -that keen observation of the minor facts of natural history, and of that quaint philosophy and genial sympathy with the humbler companions of their sport, which so frequently mark shooting, as distinguished from racing men, and render their conversation anything but "shoppy."
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