SPORTING YARNS.
Sporting Yarns. By Lieutenant-Colonel C. P. Haggard, D.S.O. (Hutchinson and Co. 5a. net.)—This is a book which should please the general reader and delight the sportsman. One regards the writer who has such tales to tell with a respectful admiration which it requires some effort to keep wholly clear of envy. To explore Newfoundland rivers for salmon, to make trial of "new Canadian waters," to catch all kinds of sea creatures, from sharks downwards, at Aden,—these are enviable experiences. We can only murmur, Non ClAilAS contingit. Colonel Haggard does the best that he can for the unhappy stay-at-homes by telling them his tales in the pleasantest fashion. In this task he has been very successfully helped by the pencil of "Griff," whose illustrations, one hundred and sixty-four in number, give an additional attraction to the book. Perhaps the best of the "yarns," from the literary point of view, is "Three Salmon at a Speyside Funeral?' It was well that the funeral was over before the twenty-seven- pounder was hooked, or there would have been an almost scandalous example of the "ruling passion strong in death." For excite- ment the ilret atart deserves the place of honour. The hunter and his shikari lie in wait in a lions' den till the old ones came back, and kill them both. For strangeness the recaptures " take the cake." The angler who hooked his lost sleeve-link was simply lucky; but to throw a line over a pipe that was being carried down to sea and land it was a triumph of skill.
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