FLOOD AND FIELD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 February 1927, Page 7

FLOOD AND FIELD.

SPORT 100 YEARS AGO

WHEN THE HORSE WAS SUPREME.

The sporting magazines of 100 years ago were not muen interested in fishing. Although they iound a little spa-e for cock-fighting and for prize lights- of ItXJ rounds; although they published the rules of the M.C.C. for cricket and single wicket, in which runs were called notches, and a side was fined five notches if one of its players stopped a. ball -wtih his hat; although tiiey mentioned that a golf club had recently been established in Manchester, that the usual form for the links was square with a., hole at each corner, and that the game was plaved with, a leather ball stuffed with leathers; although they argued fiercely over the respective merits of Hint locks and new fangjed caps—they were completely dominated 'by the horse. Nothing else really mattered to them. In 1827 the horse ruled the world. Even the King was patted on the back for loyalty to the true monarch when he forbade the shooting of foxes on the Royal estates. The drivers of the stage coaches were of greater public interest than most members of Parliament. Thus writes Arthur Ransome in the Manchester Guardian. We read of stage coachmen who had tailors’ bills of £9O a year and drove in white kid gloves, nearing out a pair and tossing them away every dozen miles. We read detailed criticism of individual coachmen like nothing in our day. The conductors on the coaches were of no more importance than policemen round the cricket field. One writer, indeed, complained of having to tip tiiein even when “they were not provided with firearms, and were therefore • no" protection” against the holdups which occasionally occurred. Importance was for the horse, and for him alone, although he reflected a little on those who actually handled him. Couching, racing, and fox-hunting were tile things. Nimrod was. an international celebrity. Pheasants were damned as England’s, ruin because those who preserved them became •■Vulpecides and Sons of Belial.” Foxhunting saved England from the fate of Rome by enabling men to dart like lightning across the country instead of leading lazy, idle lives, crawling through the world like maggots, or dozing like fat aldermen by their own firesides and dying at last- of sloth and inactivity.” Violent exercise and hard drinking then went together, and we read of a man who gulped three bottles of port at three successive draughts, but. on being offered a fourth, “excused himself as- he was going to several other parties and was afraid lie might get a drop too much.”

EARLY ANGLERS. It is surprising that- fishing held up its head at all in these robust and noisy pages. But- it is even more surprising that t-lie kind of fishing which filched most- space from the earnest debaters of grass versus oats, and the comparative merit of coachmen on the northern and southern roads, was not salmon or trout fishing, but the fishing which most fox-liunting anglers nowadays arc ready to despise. Among the- engravings of celebrated horses there is one of two gentlemen, wearing white trousers and top hats, engaged in playing and netting a pike. The pike, we are told, weighed eight pounds, and its captor would like to ask a sporting friend “What he thinks of a plunge that makes you jump again, and then a run of 20 yards across the river ? I know, lie will cry out in ccstacy, ‘The Devil take foxhunting’: though lie don’t mean it.” Then there is an engraving of a ninepiund' carp ‘‘taken by that excellent angler Mr Chase, of Arundel, on May o (!) in the River A run. in the eddy so well known to anglers, called the Crab Tree Hole.”' Two days later, we learn. Mr Chase took another, of o,Vll>. which, “being hooked on the outside of its mouth, was very formidable in the water.” There is; a long correspondence on the catching of carp, in which some desperadoes oven asked for instruction in the use of nets. I had never heard of flyfbhing'for carp until I looked through, magazines. But here are elaborate engravings of carp flies, re-' markable for long fluffy whiskers. Carp. generally, take up their fair share of space. There is even an account of one which sat so patiently for its- portrait that it was honoured hv presentation to the president of the Royal Academy. But the pike(ishers became impatient. One, writing in February on the carp question, ejaculated in a postscirpt that ‘‘A more beautiful season for fishing pike nevor was seen.” Another says that; pike-fishing “is as- superior to carpfishing as fox-hunting is to ferretilia.” There are a few sidelights on other methods of coarse fishing. We are advised to fish for dace with “sun ill. compact , flies,” embellish with gentles, and we are given a recipe for a -ground bait which might be worth trvTiur to-day. A quarter of a pound of'old Cheshire cheese, bruised in a mortar with the lees of olive oil to to consistency of a thick paste. To this add a pennyworth of rose water, and divide it into little balls not bigger than a oca. “Strew them in the water where yon design bo angle.”

PERCH AND PIKE. .vil Lins in a magazine ot net'wise- almost exclusively occupied wiui horses . ana meant, lor readers lor waoin loxu outing was the serious business of me suggests that the curious taste leeling whieli even to-day leads some iruut-n.sliers to look down on otiiet Kinds oi angling is a- newer thing man one had thought, and not a|i oiu tradition. lucre is omer evidence ui an even more (onvineing kind. We bear not-tiing of the price of salmon rivers, but tuese fox-hunters and drivers ol foui'-in-liand are told of *'subscriptions waters with good; pike and perch.'’ People who used the .King's arms on the Lea had a free range of some water on the Leu. Others paid os lid a day. The principal fish were chub, roach, dace and gudgeon. Another water at a. guinea, a year is recommended ‘because it contains “very fine eels.” What little there is about salmon and trout is- interesting. As long ago as 1827 it was complained that “the very nature of a thorough angler is almost obsolete —the steam engine lias everywhere seared the lonely fisherman.” Evfcjp then people we're coinplaining of the scarcity of fish, and there was talk of pollution in the TJsk. Let it be set down now to the credit of the men of Hereford (whose descendants have no doubt forgotten it) that for some time they refused to have their streets lit with gas “on the plea that the pipes communicating v ith tli" river would destroy the fish” in the Wye. A tablet of gold should commemorate these worthy men. Their hearts at least were in the .right place. Another reason than pollution is suggested for the shortage of trout in Brittany. Jt is put down to the strict keening of Lent., “for although the men have !ess> religion thaif Hottentots, vet- the women and old have, a double stock,” and- sve'rybcdr ' is made to. ©at fish or starve.