WILD SPORT WITH GUN, RIFLE, AND SALMON ROD.
Wild Sport with Gun, Rifle, and Salmon Rod. By Gilfrid W. Hartley. (William Blackwood and Sons. 12s.)—Perhaps the most abiding impression that is left by this delightful book is the pleasure caused by the sport of which the author thus writes : "Long shall we remember one lovely February evening at the pigeon-caves ; the sun—setting in a wonderful blaze of crimson and purple andyellow—flooded the rocks, making the great beds of rain- sprinkled sea-pinks just above them flash like emeralds; while St. Kilda, not visible till that moment all that day, suddenly stood out in front of it like a mountain arisen from the sea." This is no mere flash of "graphic" eloquence irradiating a monotonous record of sport. Mr. Hartley is a genuine lover of Nature in all its moods ; and it is quite evident that he could not have refrained from describing these moods even if he had never indulged in a hunt for a forty-pound salmon or a wild boar. This book will there- fore be enjoyed by many who cannot enter thoroughly into the spirit—one might even say the pagsion—of the author, a passion which renders it almost unnecessary for him to say of the papers in it that they "give faithful accounts of actual days' sport ; in no single case has an additional animal or bird or fish been killed for the sake of effect." Mr. Hartley has had various experiences. He is equally at home shooting wild boar in the Vosges, black stags in Morar, or wild fowl in the Outer Hebrides, "where the sea is all round you, lying placidly glistening under the bright winter or rolling in great waves—tearing and striving with the rocks, always—stormy or quiet, dull or bright—of a beautiful pale green." To Mr. Hartley a salmon is always a salmon to be, if possible, played, and certainly to be landed, whether in Bavaria or in Norway. Mr. Hartley has done well to republish these papers, the majority of which have already appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. It is one of the pleasantest—and beat written—books of genuine sport which have appeared for many a day.
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