THE FIELD BOOK.
DONCASTER RACE FOR THE GREAT ST LEGER STAKES, 1832.
INTRODUCTION.
In presenting the Field Book to the Sporting World, someexplanation respecting the motives that led to its publication, aredeemed necessary.
An enthusiastic admirer of rural sports from boyhood, theCompiler sought with avidity after any book connected with hisfavourite recreations, from which either amusement or informationmight be obtained. The older authors, with the exception of a fewpages of quaint and curious anecdote, were generally formed ofbarbarous theories, whose absurdities had long since caused them tobe disregarded. The more modern, whether confined to a particularsubject, or professing to be repertories of British Sports, were toofrequently overloaded with hackneyed and unimportant matter, andmerely reprints of treatises for years before the public, and differingfrom their predecessors in nothing but the name.
But had there been nothing objectionable in the execution ofsporting works, as they appeared during the last century, the totalchange in everything connected with the British field, would renderthem now of little value, but to point a contrast between thepast and present systems. Without reverting to the times whenjockeys rode in tie-wigs, and men would not venture to a trout-streamunless furnished with a velvet cap; when country gentlemendeserted their ladye-loves ere cock-crow, to see the sun rise above afox-cover; when no pond-fish could resist a bait prepared with adead-man’s finger; and a sucking-mastiff, stuffed with snails andjudiciously roasted, was a sovereign remedy for a shoulder-slip;—withoutreverting to these times, what changes have not occurredwithin our own recollections? The mystic arcana of old profess