By permission of the publishers of “The Sporting Spaniel.”
]
There is a decided “boom” in dog books just at present. Messrs. Phillips
and Cane have added to the large library of these a small but
comprehensive and well-written volume[19] on the spaniels, a class of
sporting dog which of late years has again received a meed of the
attention it deserves. We say “of late years,” as the authors in their
very interesting and suggestive first chapter show us how important a
part the spaniel played in the sport of our ancestors two and three
centuries or more ago. They are probably right in their assertion that
there is no variety of dog which can claim higher antiquity than the
spaniel. The Irish water, English water, springer, cocker, coloured
field, Clumber, black field and Sussex breed is dealt with in turn; the
cocker and black field varieties receiving the greatest attention. The
springer is the oldest of the several breeds, and from him we derive our
field spaniels of the present day. The cocker, for which Mr. Phillips
appears to have a preference, is one of the oldest recognised breeds,
and he is of opinion that the modern type more nearly approaches the
old-fashioned dog than its progenitor of twenty years ago; a
circumstance traceable perhaps to the increased attention its growing
popularity has earned for it. The same would seem to be true of the
Clumber, whose history, so far as England is concerned, is traced to the
presentation by the Duc de Noailles of a number of spaniels to Henry,
second Duke of Newcastle, about the end of the eighteenth century. No
variety has been more carefully bred than the Clumber, and its antiquity
is proven by the fidelity with which the characteristics of the breed
perpetuate themselves. The authors are well known as authorities on
spaniels both at field trials and on the show bench; the former,
instituted in 1899, have proved a great success, and we share the
confidence of Mr. Cane that their influence will be in every way
beneficial. The book, which is well and straightforwardly written,
contains a mine of information concerning the best individual dogs of
the day which have come under the notice of the authors. The
illustrations, from old pictures and from photographs, are both
interesting and helpful.
The third divisional volume of Professor Wortley Axe’s great work[20] is
now before us, and the contents maintain in every respect the standard
of merit established by the two preceding volumes. This volume deals
with certain classes of disease to which equine flesh is liable, namely,
diseases of the urinary organs, the nervous system, the absorbent
system, organs of circulation and respiration, very few of which the
horseowner should attempt to treat on his own responsibility. Perusal of
the professor’s pages will be of assistance to him in describing
symptoms; but this section of the work appeals more especially to the
veterinary surgeon. It needs no knowledge of the surgical art, however,
to appreciate the remarkable clearness of the diagrams and drawings with
which the work is illustrated. Professor Wortley Axe’s book gives fair
promise of being, when complete, the most comprehensive work on the
horse in the language.
From the Gresham Publishing Company we have received a “Dissected Model”
showing in ingenious and convenient shape the development of the teeth
of the horse from early foal-hood to advanced age. The coloured drawings
show the mouth at various ages, and individual teeth, whole and in
section, to show the effect of wear at different ages. A most useful
publication, from which the young horseowner may learn how to correctly
age a horse after half an hour’s attentive study.
The fox furnishes the text for the next book[21] on our table. Mr. F. W.
Millard, as Secretary to the Gamekeepers’ Association, approaches the
animal in a spirit different from that exhibited by Mr. Dale in the work
noticed last month, but his aim is the praiseworthy one of showing that
the protection of foxes is quite compatible with the preservation of
game. There are people, we fear, to whose minds it is not possible to
carry this conviction, but, if it were within the region of possibility,
Mr. Millard’s temperate and well-balanced arguments would accomplish it.
The author is a naturalist, and has made the habits and ways of foxes a
special study; and while we find in his pages no single word against
which the fox-preserver might protest, we find a very great deal of
which he must cordially approve. The protection of sitting birds,
naturally, is a matter to which prominence is given, and for this
purpose Mr. Millard suggests numerous methods—conspicuously the use of
renardine and discs painted with luminous paint—the latter, of course,
are open to the objection that they may attract human poachers while
scaring the fox; but with the gamekeeper must remain the onus of keeping
these at a distance. His methods of protecting the pheasant-rearing
field seem to us also very sound, as do his suggestions for the
management of hand-reared pheasants when turned out. He is resolute in
his opinion that the mangey fox is the worst foe of winged game. “Its
affliction permits it little rest and it is constantly on the hunt, day
and night”: his advice to the keeper to retain the carcase of a mangey
fox, if he destroy one, and show it to some responsible person is
judicious. We may particularly recommend to the notice of those who seek
to promote hunting the chapter on the management of a vixen and her
cubs. Mr. Millard’s system entails a certain amount of trouble, it
involves some study of the habits of the individual vixen, but we cannot
doubt that the plan of ascertaining her favourite foraging direction,
and putting down food for her at the farthest point she is likely to
reach when on her nightly hunt excursion, should be distinctly
beneficial to all concerned. The author maintains that “a steel trap
_can_ be used without the slightest danger to foxes,” and he sympathises
with the keeper who is expected to preserve game in a hunting country
without using it. The use of steel traps in such wise that they shall be
innocuous to foxes is one of the minor sciences, and Mr. Millard’s
advice on the subject is well worth careful study. His book is that of a
practical man who knows his subject thoroughly, and the game-preserver
will be well advised to present a copy of it to his keeper, with
injunctions to “read, mark, learn, and digest.”
A man who has fished for seventy years, and that in the best salmon and
trout waters of Scotland and England, with occasional visits to Germany,
must have something to say worth the telling; and Mr. Barrington’s
book[22] is one of the most enjoyable on angling we have read for a long
time. The capture of an undersized trout in his eighth year was the
predisposing cause of his affection for the rod, and he has been a
fisherman ever since, devoting to the sport, as we gather, every day he
could escape from the toils of the Foreign Office. His book is somewhat
discursive, but this only adds to its attractions: he ranges from the
Ilm in Germany to the Tay, thence to the Hampshire Avon, from the
Findhorn to the Tweed, Garry, or Costello in Connemara; but whereever he
takes us he is always the same entertaining and instructive companion
full of reminiscence and idea, of helpful suggestion and useful hint.
His long experience enables Mr. Barrington to institute comparisons
between the salmon and trout-fishing to be obtained in his early days
and the present time, and notwithstanding the wonderful days of sport he
has enjoyed in comparatively recent times on the Tweed, he is of the
opinion that our fathers had better sport in all departments than is
vouchsafed to us, save in salmon-fishing; he believes that bigger fish
are killed nowadays than used to be taken half a century ago. No doubt
he is quite right; on streams where salmon and trout are less numerous
than they used to be within easy memory, they run larger. Mr. Barrington
is a member of the broad-minded school of anglers. He recognises the
superiority of the dry-fly method for trout, as he prefers the fly for
salmon; but he does not on that account disdain the worm or minnow for
the one, nor the prawn for the other, and is at pains to make clear his
conviction that one method may, under given circumstances, be quite as
sportsmanlike and demand every whit as much skill as another. The
circumstance that the author has, during his long career, known many
famous public men adds much to the interest of his pages. The late Duke
of Roxburghe, he tells us, threw a better and longer salmon line than
any man he ever knew. A quaint anecdote is that of Lord Palmerston, who
was not an angler. He once asked the author how he “managed to direct
the fly into the mouth of a grayling and not into that of a trout”; but
we dare not begin quotation from a work so tempting. There is a very
great deal in this book which is well worth careful study, for Mr.
Barrington has been interested in the work of restocking and stream
management, and has much to say on these subjects. The reader may open
the book anywhere in the comfortable certainty of finding amusement, he
will not find it an easy one to put down.
Mr. Roscoe has done well to publish this new edition of his very
readable little work.[23] Like Mr. Barrington, he makes the rod his
constant holiday companion, and as it has accompanied him on visits to
Switzerland, the Black Forest, Tyrol and Normandy, as well as to more
familiar waters in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, his “rambles” lack
nothing of variety. His observations of the methods of the local
sportsmen encountered are entertaining, if not particularly helpful;
guidance, however, is not what the British angler abroad expects from
the local expert. On the contrary, the local expert, so far as our
experience goes, invariably reckons on the visitor for advice, which,
perhaps, is not much to be wondered at. Anglers who cannot, for domestic
reasons, make indulgence in their favourite the sole _raison d’être_ of
the summer holiday will do wisely to possess themselves of this work,
which contains many and useful suggestions concerning the choice of
resorts where the trout-rod may be brought into use. These are really
far more numerous than the average Continental visitor is aware; and,
under Mr. Roscoe’s guidance, some very attractive streams may be
discovered.
Messrs. Hardy Brothers, of Alnwick, send us a copy of their “Angler’s
Guide” for the current year. This work contains many useful hints on
fishing, and indexed lists of every conceivable requirement in the shape
of tackle and gear. We must give a word of praise to the very admirable
coloured plates of trout and salmon flies.
George Hirst.
The name of George H. Hirst is one of the greatest in contemporary, or,
in fact, any cricket, and it is with much pleasure that we present his
portrait as a frontispiece to BAILY’S MAGAZINE.
At the present time if one were asked the question “who is the greatest
all-round cricketer in England?” it is probable that the names of George
Hirst and Mr. F. S. Jackson would at once occur to the mind, and no one
could be very far wrong in suggesting that these two champions of
Yorkshire respectively represent the best of the professional and
amateur strength of English cricket. George Hirst was born at Kirkheaton
on September 7th, 1871, and his earliest association with public cricket
was properly enough with his village club, and it was mainly through his
efforts that the Lumb Challenge Cup was won by them before he reached
his eighteenth birthday. The lad devoted himself to cricket as a
calling, and in 1892 his association with the Huddersfield Club proved a
secure stepping-stone to a great cricket career: early in that season he
made his first appearance at Lord’s for Yorkshire against M.C.C. At that
time he was played simply as a bowler, but although he batted number
eleven he scored 20 and 43 not out.
However, it cannot be said that Hirst displayed in his earliest days any
full promise of the success in store for him. Indeed, towards the end of
the season of 1892 he was left out of the Yorkshire first eleven, and in
August of that year, upon the occasion when Messrs. H. T. Hewett and L.
C. H. Palairet scored 364 for the first wicket for Somerset against
Yorkshire, George Hirst was walking round the Taunton ground, a twelfth
man, watching with impotent indignation the unsuccessful efforts of his
colleagues. Zeal and earnestness, coupled with a Herculean frame and
great natural advantages, were sure to bring Hirst to the front, and for
many years now his name has been a household word throughout the cricket
world. Originally a fast left-handed bowler with a long pounding run he
was always able to take full advantage of a rough wicket, and in the
early nineties the Yorkshire team had to be experts upon rough wickets,
so bad were some of the grounds upon which they were condemned to play.
But with a general improvement of cricket pitches, even in Yorkshire,
bowlers found it more and more difficult to bump their way to glory, and
Hirst was one of the first of the new school of swerving bowlers who
have developed a deliberate curl in the air, which in the case of Hirst
has been phenomenal, especially with a new ball. The traditional setting
of the field for a fast left-hand bowler formerly placed nine men on the
off-side, including several “slips,” and one man to look after the
“on-side,” a sort of casual mid-on, usually the oldest man in the field.
So to the elderly mind it appears strange enough to see Hirst bowling
away as hard as he can pelt, with only two or three men on the off-side,
with no slip, but with a crowd of eager earnest men swarming on the
leg-side. It is a quaint disposition of the field, but one rendered
essential when the ball delivered left-arm round the wicket curves in
until at the finish it is sometimes almost a wide to leg.
If George Hirst had never bowled a ball in his life he would probably
never have been heard of in first-class cricket, but his abilities as a
batsman are now so great that if he were never to bowl a ball again, he
would probably still be selected to play for England. His batting is
full of power, and he is just about the finest exponent of “the
hook-stroke” that we have. Indeed, his talent for despatching anything
like a short ball to the square-leg boundary has sometimes led to his
downfall, for on his day almost every description of ball appears short
to the appreciative bat of Hirst, who has been known to meet his fate
with his right foot planted close to the off-stump and his sturdy
frame-before-wicket gallantly but remotely hooking at a shooting half
volley. We are half inclined to believe that George Hirst is one of
those cricketers who prays for rain, for he is probably the most
effective batsman of the day upon a slow wicket, when he appears to be
able to pull any ball anywhere he pleases. Moreover, a good fast wicket
means a longer working day for him, as his record of last season so
clearly shows. At Leicester he batted for seven hours for a score of
341, the highest ever played for Yorkshire, of which no less than 218
runs were made by boundary hits. When Hirst went to the wicket Yorkshire
had lost three men for 22 runs, and when after seven hours’ batting he
was last man out for a score of 341, all his partners had only made 132
runs between them. Later in the season he followed this up by 232 not
out against Surrey, a performance he supplemented by taking five Surrey
wickets for 43 runs. Hirst’s record for last season’s work was 2,266
runs with a batting average of 53, and 110 wickets at an average cost of
19·94 runs. And this great season’s work came after an injury to his leg
in May, which was only remedied by the skill of Sir Alfred Fripp, and a
considerable modification of his run up to the bowling crease.
Considering his heavy build and the very hard work he does in the
cricket field, it is remarkable that Hirst has not been more often
“crocked.” It is now ten years since he first attained the distinction
of the double feat of scoring over 1,000 runs and taking more than 100
wickets, and ever since then he has been quite the busiest cricketer of
the day. He is also one of the most popular, as the phenomenal success
of his benefit match, a year or two ago, clearly demonstrated; and from
the skill and agility he displayed at Lord’s early in May he appears to
have before him a future which may equal in brilliancy his past. And we
can wish him nothing better than that.
[The photograph from which our portrait is engraved, is by E. Hawkins
and Co., Brighton.]