Though the basic principles of shooting remain the same, practice
and apparatus alter and improve with the times, and accordingly Mr. Eric Parker, aided by thirteen other experts in their various lines, has set himself the task of explaining to all interested the operation and results of the new methods. Shooting by Moor, Field and Shore (Seeley, Service, 21s.) is therefore a wholly modern .and, if compressed, yet a complete encyclopaedia in little for the gunner and for all who are concerned with the rearing and preservation of game. Merely as natural history, too, the book, written as it is by trained observers, will be found of particular interest and charm to the many who do not shoot ; while Major Pollard's chapter on the cookery of game should make even the most blasé of gourmets water at the mouth. May one point out to the editor, Mr. Eric Parker, who himself writes with such grace and authority on the four birds of the grouse tribe and on the partridge, that the z in capercailzie is not the last letter of the alphabet and so not "an unwarranted defor- mation," but is a device of the old printers to represent an obsolete Scottish letter which had a sort of y sound ? And is the ptarmigan " the only British bird which albinizes in winter ? What about the snow-bunting ? A leading feature of the book, in addition to many useful diagrams, is the beautiful and instructive photographic illustrations, which go to show that we are not to regard the shooter merely as one who is interested in destroying life, but as one who can and does take an immense interest in observing and recording it for the delight of others.
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