Good Sporting Annals
Hunting Diary. By W. W. Apperley. (Nisbet. 15s.) Days on the Hill by an Old Stalker. Edited by Eric Parker. (Nisbet. 15s.)
The Fifth Estate. By Jerome D. Travers and James R. Growell. (Knopf. 10s. 6d.)
THE production of a hunting diary by a grandson of " Nimrod," the great, will delight hunting men and women, among whom Mr. Apperley was very well known. He was more than a good huntsman. Few men of his day knew more about hounds ; and none more about the Welsh hound, a variety with quite peculiar characteristics. More than this : he was a good naturalist, and by reason of his interest both in game and vermin was especially a student of several animals that are nearly extinct, and about which we have too little information. Among these are the pine-marten, the foumart (or pole-cat) and the kite, and among commoner animals, the Welsh mountain hare and the badger. The whole country where Mr. Apperley's experience chiefly lay is in itself peculiar. The strongest earth in the country used by both fox and badger is the tumulus below Glandovey Castle, raised to some pre- historic hero and still regarded with superstitious awe. The diary itself, like most diaries, is not easy to read consecutively, though it is an admirable dipping bag, from which to pull out treasures. Happily Mr. Coming's introduction, occupying a third of the book, is as good an historical and personal sketch as we have read for some while.. It will be popular in Wales, for the appreciations of well-known characters. For the more general reader it will be appreciated for the many good stories and incidental notes on natural history, most of them issuing front Mr. Apperley's experiences in hunting foxes, otters and hares in some of the sternest, most individual scenes within the British Isles. The book is profusely illustrated with iihotographs of people and places.
Mr. Fletcher, who is known as a picturesque historian of Yorkshire, as well as a writer of fiction above the average, has adopted much the same method as Mr. Cuming. His Road, chapter on Doncaster and the Great North Road, the route to the race course and the first beginnings of
the St. Leger make delightful reading even for those who have 110 particular interest in referring to the details of any par- ticular St. Leger Stakes. Ile takes the chronicle of all the St.
Legers from 1776 to 1926 ; divides them into convenient groups and writes a gossipy but very sound introductory chapter to the stricter and more detailed description that follows. The St. Leger is the Derby of the North of England, and holds quite as important a place in the annals of social England. It deserved, and has found, a worthy annalist. The Illustrations to this very solid volume are good. They include four coloured plates, delightfully reproduced.
Mr. Eric Parker's discovery of " an old stalker " recalls the discovery of " a son of the marches." The old stalker whose profession is to be a gillie, possesses, very much in the same quality as "-that East Anglian naturalist," a peculiar intimacy of observation, and instinct of insight into the ways of wild creatures, which more than compensate for any occasional deficiencies in the technique of writing. He has exercise; his mind chiefly on the red deer, the shyest of all mammals, at least under Scottish conditions. The shooting of the stag is very much less important to his theme than the instinct of the animal, the acuteness of its senses, the scenery of the hills and their queer effects on weather and air currents. The little sketches of the route of particular stalks would delight General Baden-Powell, as chief scoutmaster, or, say, Mr. Belloc, as critic of campaigns. There is one passage on the relations of the deer and the hares and the grouse that may be paralleled in Mr. Apperley's diary, on the attentions of the magpies to a hidden fox. To use an ingenious phrase from Henry James, the scene and the denizens " consent to a mutual relation " ; and it is a peculiarly subtle perception of this relation that has perfected the technique—in practice as in print—of " the old stalker." The book is novel in kind and quality.
Foxhunting takes first place in Mr. Bernard Darwin's mold companionable anthology. Perhaps no one has ever written about games with such stylish gaiety as Mr. Darwin himself. He has found a real niche in literature for the happy golfer. The mark of his anthology is its preference for the more enduring writers. Mr. Darwin's own " King Charles's head," as most readers of The Times are aware, is Dickens himself ; and he could not avoid giving him more and longer quotations than anyone else. But Thackeray, Hazlitt, Pcpys, Scott; Stevenson, Borrow and other classic wits are in his company. Though the book has over a score of subdivisions, the quota- tions are never too short. The anthology avoids that one demerit of Mr. Eric Parker's Game Pie, which touched so delightfully the same subjects. Perhaps there is too little verse. One would have liked a whiff of Warburton, of Kipling, of Browning, with perhaps Canon 13ceching on his bicycle. But in general Mr. Darwin is almost as good a collector as writer. There are not many anthologies to which you can sit down for so quiet a reunion with old friends, as in these colloquies on sports and life in the open air. It is never
-breathless or jerky. -You may read it' as you reread a long book by some well-tried author whom you loved as n boy.
Among the many books on golf is one from America. The, grip of the golf-club. is more effective thinthe grip of the pen, but though the English and manner are provincial, there is
not uninteresting sketch of some of the pioneers of golf in America and Britain.
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