FISHING AND HUNTING.*
WE must recommend to those who care for angling literature Norwegian and other Fish-Tales. It is amusing without being instructive. The author dates his preface from the Athenmum Club, but since his name does not appear among the list of members it is a safe inference that " Bradnock Hall" is a pseudonym. It is too remote a contingency to suppose that he can be a hall-porter or waiter. His brother is a man of letters, and he is a regular visitor to Norwegian rivers. There are other indications which betray him. But be that as it may, he writes a capital lively English style, he describes the trivial daily adventures of fishing with knowledge and in choice language, and he is a bit of a jester. Now many anglers are jesters, but unfortunately their jokes when printed are trite and commonplace. Mr. Bradnock Hall never errs in this respect, and yet never curbs his desire to be facetious. The result is an excellent little book, mostly of tales from Norway, but interspersed with matter from the lichen, Devon- shire, and elsewhere. The smoking-room of the Eldorado' crossing the North Sea has not been forgotten in gleaning material. For our own part, we much prefer the description of daily life on the Norwegian sea-trout river, and would have gladly heard more of it and dispensed with the "political or semi-political " trip to Hungary which ended in a fishing adventure. The little Norwegian river must surely run into the Sogne Fjord. We like to read of the silvery sea-trout, though they are not big ones. We see the wooden farm and the haymaking peasants who watch the mad English with their expensive rods. The doings of Henry, Charles, Mary, and the others are pleasant reading, and when called on for a story about fishing they are as ready as any one in The Arabian Nights. There is only one old jest in the book. It ' is concerned with the exaggerations of anglers : " 'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth," as Shakespeare wrote ever so long ago.
We must turn now from fishing to hunting. The Old Charlton Hunt was one of the earliest packs of foxhounds in England. The Duke of Monmouth and Lord Grey, the owner of Uppark, kept hounds there. Later on William III. and the Grand Duke of Tuscany came down to see a fox hunt. The Duke of Bolton and Squire Roper were joint Masters. The glories of Charlton reached their height under the second Duke of Richmond, who bought Goodwood in 1720. During the first half of the eighteenth century Charlton was the Melton of the South, where a select club ruled the hunt and the aristocratic sportsmen of the day were accommodated in lodgings. Lord March has exhumed from a deed-box at Goodwood a bundle of old documents. These .Records of the Old Charlton Hunt he has now published, and they form an interesting addition to the ancient records of the chase. The handsome buff-and-blue volume is illustrated with portraits and hunting pictures from Goodwood, with views of Charlton as it is to-day, and a large facsimile of a curious hunting agreement between the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Taukerville. The Duke's hunting-box at Charlton is still standing. None who are interested in the history of hunting, or who love West Sussex, can read these ancient papers with- out pleasant emotion. They give a strange picture of sport that is past, and form a lively, though disconnected, history of forgotten days in which many well-known names appear. We do not think that they add many important facts to those contained in the pamphlet which Mr. Bennett published some
• (1) Norwegian and other Fish-Tales. B Bradnock Hall. With 16 Illustra. tions. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 5s. net.]—(2) Records of the Old Charlton Bunt. By the Earl of March, M. .0, D.S.O. With Illustrations in Photogravure, Collotype, and Half-Tone from Pictures at Goodwood. London : Elkin Mathews. [12e. 6d. net.]—(3) Hounds, Gentlemen, Please! By Commander W. B. Forbes, B.H. (" Maintop "). London Hodder and Stoughton. [128. net.]
years ago on the Charlton Hunt, but they contain a mass of curious detail. The question as to which is the oldest English pack of foxhounds is likely to remain unsolved. Harry Budd, of Charlton, gamekeeper to the Duke of Richmond, was one of the last links with this past age. He died in 1807, aged ninety-four, and had heard his grandfather tell how he had conversed with the Duke of Monmouth. Lord March's volume contains a varied miscellany : extracts from the second Duke's hunting diary which covers the years 1737-4,5, hound lists and pedigrees, bills for saddlery and expenses of the hunt, and a number of letters mostly giving accounts of the doings in the kennels and the field in the D Like's absence. Many of these letters are from John, first Earl Delawarr, who managed the hounds for several years. It is strange to find an account of the "great chase" of January 26th, 1739, when hounds ran for ten hours and covered fifty-seven miles with no suggestion of a change. Lastly, there are some lengthy hunting verses and songs of the period, which are none the less amusing for being in doggerel. In one of these it is suggestive (since the etymology is still disputed) to find " Tally-ho 1" printed Tonic hors.
We must not leave the subject of hunting without men- tioning Commander W. B. Forbes's book which he has called Hounds, Gentlemen, Please ! It is a volume of collected sketches and articles that may be re-read with pleasure by hunting men, who are all familiar with the gallant naval officer's pseudonym of "Maintop." The theme which runs through the book is the great delight which many would derive if they paid a little attention to the hounds and tried to understand something of hunting. There are chapters on the management of coverts and artificial earths. Other parts of the book treat of the habits of foxes, types we see in the field, hound management and puppy walking, and the humours of the chase. We have read the book with pleasure, but it is hard to find much new to be said on these familiar topics. "Maintop's" great experience of Irish hunting gird a freshness to much of the ground he covers. He tells twice over the very old story : " What fun we should have but for these damned •hounds ! " But he only once in the whole book calls a fox " the little red rover."
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