The Sportsman in Ireland, by " Cosmopolite," is a volume of
"The Sportsman's Library," edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart. (E. Arnold). The plan is to republish, with such changes as the editor may think fit, specimens of the sporting literature of a bygone generation. " Cosmopolite " seems to have been the nom de plume of a certain Serjeant Allen, who published the book more than fifty years ago. As for the editing, either too much or not enough has been done. Mr. Serjeant Allen, if indeed he was the author, had strong views on various political and ecclesiastical matters, and took occasion of sporting topics to express them. These passages, the editor tells us, have been left out. As a matter of fact, not a few remain. We have some interesting de- scriptions of sport with pike, salmon, saline ferox, and common trout, descriptions that make one's mouth water, for half a century has made a sad change in this respect. The fish are fewer and far more wide-awake. Then there are sketches of life which, though not connected with sport, we should be sorry to have missed. There is, it is true, a suspicion that the author is not always to be taken an pied de la lettre. Even the editor remonstrates when he talks of an eagle which could have severed a limb with a stroke of his beak. The prices of fifty years ago are Curious: "Pork, 2d. a pound; beef, 3d. to 34d.; mutton, 4d. ; a codfish, six pounds. Is.; fowls, 10d. apiece ; chickens, from 6d. to 61d. ; potatoes, 41d. per stone." This was at Killarney. At the same time the car charges were exceedingly high. A curious feature in the sporting portion of the book is the way in which "Cosmopolite "talks of using salmon-roe as a bait without the faintest feeling of shame. It had not then, it is true, been for- bidden bylaw, as it is now ; but one would think that the mere name, implying the destruction of breeding salmon, would have been enough.
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