SUMMARY OF MOUNSEER'S PERFORMANCES. In 1848 he started twice without winning. In 1849 he started seven times and won once :- In 1850 he started six times and won three : Total...... £2,525 The Honourable Major Pitt's career on the turf, at least as an owner of race-horses, does not extend very far back; neither has fortune favoured him greatly with such as he has brought out. His only great hit so far has been the Chester Cup, the achievement of which gave as much general pleasure and satisfaction as it is, perhaps, possible to witness where there are so many contending interests as on a racecourse. The quiet and truly gentlemanly bearing of the Major, however, have gained him a justly-merited popularity that, we trust, he may long live to enjoy. Major Pitt's horses are trained by Percy at Pimpern, near Blandford, who also trains for the Honourable Sidney Herbert; and has the credit of having brought Clarion, and some other good horses, to the post. "STRAY SHOTS.” ENGRAVED BY J. WESTLEY, FROM A PAINTING BY A. S. BOULT. The Stray Shot" just now may be considered in the height of season. After the covers have been well rattled and beaten, and the picked party of grandees had their full, birds get in every way scarcer and more scattered. The half domesticated, self-confident pheasant of the first of October becomes far more a pheasant of the world-shy and suspicious of the plush guardian even, he hitherto so fondly trusted, and tempted at times to roam for ease and safety from those quarters he once too blindly imagined were intended for nothing else. In something this state of mind he enters November, and on the second or third, perhaps, the foxhounds enter his stronghold. This completes his dismay: the "Hoik in there!" to him is as surely a "hoik out ;" and with a whole army of hunting crops pointed at his side, he sets bold reynard the example and makes for the open. In much the same ratio does real sport now commence. An outlying bird, as Mr. Scrope would call him, fairly hunted up to and satisfactorily accounted for, is worth a dozen close-sitting, coverkeeping gentlemen. The bag, may-be, is not quite so heavy, or the entry so astounding; but only let a party sit down and count over their sport out versus in, or the hedgerows against the preserves, and see which furnishes better food for reflection. From the monotonous make ready!-present!-fire! of the one fashion, how different the excitement and strong play of the other. Nearly every "stray shot" has its history. How cleverly old "Don" made out this bird at the turn of the lane! How Fan stood to the winged hen in the double! And in what famous style our young friend from Lincoln's-inn, scored a run for each barrel when the leash rose at once from under the Elms! In short, ladies and gentlemen, the "stray shot" is amongst the best of sport it comes too when you are well seasoned to encounter it, and is here introduced-as champagne should be at dinner-just at that happy moment when we feel a craving for something beyond the dull round of mere plenty. Mr. Editor-a glass with you! It will relish the back of that dainty dandy you overcame so manfully on the "Cross-ways!" ago. LITERATURE. DOG BREAKING. By Lieutenant-Colonel Hutchinson. London: John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1850.-This is a second edition -enlarged some three-fold-of a work that appeared a couple of years It is a pleasant didactic anecdotic brochure, evidently written con amore on a subject especially interesting to all those amateurs of field sports in whose eyes shooting finds favour. To such, indeed, it is of far more account than any theory of gun or powder, shot or percussion for of what avail is artillery without something to fire at? Colonel Hutchinson's volume is most unworthily announced under the plebeian title of "Dog Breaking :" why mongrels and curs of low condition are broken-these to badger; those to rat-all to miscellaneous vermin of one kind or other. But Ponto and Don are aristocratic dogs that introduce their visiting acquaintance to grouse, partridges, and pheasants. The book should be entitled, "The Pointer's and Setter's Course to the Degree of M.A." Let these be trained in the way they should go, according to the principles set forth by our gallant professor, and we shall have puppies brought to a point of perfection "that the world ne'er saw." Nor is this all if but for the sake of prolepsis, let it be observed that the treatise under notice embraces a range of information so wide, that were it said to be omnigenous, the term would hardly be out of bounds. Ladies' parasols, tigresses' claws, beef-soup, and Lord Brougham-it is at all in the ring. Last, but surely not least, --for he who should provide it would deserve canonization-it professes to furnish a specific for horses that rush at their fences! Think of that, O thou who, with thy heart in the sole of thy boot, and thine eyelids screwed into thy cheek-bones, hast charged oftentimes, in pursuit of thy proper pastime, abysses which would have baulked Mazeppa's "Tartar of the Ukraine breed," when the wolves were snapping at his tail! Well, the colonel once had one of those fiery dragons-an Irish chesnut—that would as lieve take a six-feet wall stern foremost, as eat old oats and beans. "He had a sad habit of rushing at his leaps," he relates; but by riding him in a smooth snaffle, and by often giving him slices of carrot when he landed on the other side of a fence, he gradually became very gentle and pleasant." It's a different sort of "slices" Paddy would prescribe for such a case, Read. Here is none of your vinegar volumes, from which you rise as from a mess of cold porridge; but one that will make you merry, if it don't make you wise. THE HUNTING FIELD. By Harry Hieover: Longman. Our friend, Hieover, having some time since offered a little instruction on ordinary or mere road riding, now ventures to order the tyro from his hack to his hunter, and with an encouraging smile, to lead him at once up to the master and introduce him in form to the "Hunting Field." The merits and truly useful accomplishments of our professor have gradually become so generally acknowledged and appreciated, that we feel assured even another still from his laboratory will be received with as hearty a welcome as any of the kindred spirits which have already preceded it. Harry Hieover, be it remembered, writes on horses and hunting for a class, more particularly, that want what he is so well qualified to supply. Without taking so much for granted, ar flying at anything like so high a game as poor Nimrod did in his Letters on Riding to Hounds, and similar reminiscences, Hieover's pupil is ever intended for a sportsman. Let him impress the most minute facts connected with hand, seat, or action, you still feel you are learning from a sportsman, and not a riding-master, and that if you fail to become one under his guidance it must be the fault of the scholar and not of the teacher. In the present volume, the reader is requested to identify himself with a middle-aged, unassuming gentleman, who having a very fair income and equally good pluck, takes manfully to hunting, as many a man has before him, with scarcely an idea beyond hanging to his horse as well as he can, and riding him as long as he will go. In this happy state he meets with Harry Hieover, who, in the course of a few wellrecorded conversations, manages to make a new man of him; gets his horses into proper form to go, and shows their owner a more fair-play plan of using them; weeds out the gaudy ones, and completes his labour of love by enforcing the dismissal of "the master servant"-That worst of tyrants, who tells his master-by courtesy so called-what he shall ride or what he shall not, and when he may come to stable, and when be permitted to see a horse stripped; that well-dressed Mephistophiles, whose ascendancy, however, happily only rests on the ignorance of his employer. Still, the "Hunting Field" is by no means all dry "school" work. Indeed, we fancy our friend has made this decidedly the most entertaining, as well as one of the most serviceable of his productions. The hunting scenes are full of spirit, and the characters from life introduced well sketched, and as judiciously selected. They ever point the moral while they adorn the tale; and many a crack horseman, who ranks himself "made," may so gain instruction in a bit of cover he only professed to draw for amusement. To old and young we can equally recommend it as a sure find, for we know none who can promise to show more sport, if they only get well away with him, than Harry Hieover. The volume, in conformity with the series to which it belongs, has a couple of well-executed engravings, after designs by the author; but on the notion here intended to be carried out, our approval is not so unqualified as on the letter-press part of the book. "The Wrong Sort," more especially, is a greatly exaggerated caricature, and certainly not worth the time and labour that must have been spent over it by the 'graver. It looks more like one of Seymour's Cockney Sportsman Ideas rather than the sort of game a thorough-bred workman would stoop to even in the way of contrast. THE FINE ART S. HUNTING ACCOMPLISHMENTS: A Series of Six Plates, from Original Drawings by H. Alken, Sen. London: Fores, 41, Piccadilly.-We have here half a dozen scenes, "lights"-without the "shadows"-of a foxhunter's life. The staunch old man drew them when, at his pencil's bidding, there arose visions of auld lang syne! There they are, pictorial Pleasures of Memory. He is "Going along at a Slapping Pace;" there we have him "Topping a Flight of Rails, and coming well into the next Field ;" anon behold him "Swishing a Rasper;" next, taking it more easily, doing the "In and Out clever;" the pack is scoring to cry, and you note him with Brummagems in "Charging an Ox Fence," and winding up the account by "Facing a Brook" like one that means it. Here is a set of the right sort, "which no sportsman should be without" whose wont it is after a dinner of good old English fare, to flavour his wine with illustrations of the morning's run that gave the zest which relishes it. We have great pleasure in announcing that a highly-finished coloured engraving is now in preparation of HARRY HIEOVER, the popular author of numerous sporting works, and so long known as a contributor to our Magazine. The print shows the author in hunting costume taking a wall on his celebrated horse "TILTER :" to his right are the pack, huntsman, and other figures. As the engraving will be produced under the superintendence of Messrs. Fores, of Piccadilly, we need scarcely say it will be brought out in their usually superior style. Independent of any interest the popularity of Harry Hieover may create, the print will in itself be a spirited and characteristic addition to the apartment or folio of the sportsman. PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS OF THE METROPOLIS. "What! is not every mortal free to speak? Here is our "friend from the country," all anxiety to go the round of London amusements; so impatient is he that it is in vain we address him by paraphrasing Canning's knife-grinder: Amusement! Lord bless your honour, there's none to be found. To him it is fruitless to descant |