MR. GATHORNE-HARDY'S SPORTING REMINISCENCES.* WE opened this book with pleasant
recollections of Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's Autumns in Argyllshire, confident of finding the same cheerful philosophy and catholic tastes in sport, and we have not been disappointed. It is a delightful record of friendships and recreations—the friendships of one who has a most sane and cheerful outlook on life and mankind, and the recreations of a man who is busy enough throughout the year to seek them with a boyish zest. He is no pedant, and there are few forms of shooting and fishing which he does not appreciate, though he has no tolerance for unsportsmanlike ways. His tastes lie not in big bags and record catches, but in sport where a man works hard for what be gets, and especially where he can also indulge in the pleasures of the naturalist. For. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy is above all things a trained and assiduous watcher of wild life, and this is well for the reader, for without some such background a mere chronicle of sport is liable to become monotonous.
The book begins with a record of early hunting-grounds, especially Braemore, where the author killed his first stag. Then we have several chapters on Colonsay, chapters well worth writing, for that delectable and unapproachable isle is a paradise of wild sport. There you may get twelve varieties any day in the autumn, and there you can practise that form of ,pentathlon dear to Mr. Gatborne-Hardy's soul, and play golf, and shoot duck and blackgame between the rounds. There, too, you may see many kinds of rare birds and seals innumerable, and on the outlying skerries you may find that uncouth beast, the great grey seal. Then come some Chapters on Norway, covering the time from the day in 1865 when the author killed his first salmon in the Rauma till last year, when he fished for brown trout in the lakes of the High Fjeld. All Norwegian chronicles are much the same, but Mr. Gathorne-Hardy varies the monotony of riverside records with accounts of expeditions and pleasant tales of the people, for he is of the type of piscator qui non sotto Tiscatur. The book closes with an account of Christmas shooting in _Argyll- shire, and a delightful- chapter on dry-fly fishing in the Lambourne at the author's Berkshire home. He is a fortunate man to have had so numb excellent sport, to have enjoyed it so well, and to be able to communicate his delights to his readers. Happy books are not so common nowadays, and this book is one long study in contentment. A word of praise should be given to the illustrations, which include sketches by Sir Frank Lockwood stud some interesting reproduetions from the famous Braemore Visitors' Book.
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