28 OCTOBER 1938, Page 46

THE DOG 'IN SPORT By J. Wentworth Day All those

who :have .read Sporting Adventure or A tat= on St. Paul's, by Mr. J. Wentworth Day, will enjoy no less The Dog in. Sport -(Harrap; 8s: 6d.): It is"not a purely technical handbook—though it does provide for almost every known sPorting dog a standard table of points ; nor is it a mere collection of sporting. stories—though the many stories it does contain are without exception vivid and pointful. Mr. Wentworth Day has provided for each breed of sporting, dog an eclectic historical survey summed up, as it were; by illustrations from his own experience. He describes the exploits of the mad old Lord Orford with his greyhounds on Newmarket Heath aa, confidently as his own adventUres in Egypt hunting the gazelle with Salukiithe gazelle runs at 45 m.p.h., the Saluki at 38 m.p.h. and the hunter has to do his best on an Arab stallion. His quotations from early books on venery are impecc- able—from a catalogue of dogs in the 1481 Boke of St. Albans, for instance. " Thyse be the names of hounds. Fyrste there is a igrehound ; a bastard ; a mengrell ; a mastif ; • a lemor ; raches ; kenettys ; teroures ; butchers houndes ; dunghyll dOgges ; tryndeltaylles ; and pryck-eryd &flys ; and small ladye's ,popees that here. awaye the flees and dyvers small siwtes.' He has faults-Tas re.writer. He hai an Iteh whenever possible to have a slash at' " intelligentsia of the sixpenny international breed," a weakness for repulsive cliches like The Young Idea," and generally a self-Conscious virility and breeziness of style. But it would be the greatest pity if these obvious faults, which can easily be measured and dis- cOurited, should disqualify The Dog in Sport from being read by ordinary laymen.