The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
In 1839 Mr. Herbert commenced in the New-York _Turf Register_ a series
of papers, under the signature of "Frank Forester," from which have
grown _My Shooting Box, The Warwick Woodlands, Field Sports of the
United States and British Provinces_, and _Fish and Fishing in the
United States and British Provinces_--works which by the general
consent of the sporting world are second to none in their department,
in any of the qualities which should distinguish this sort of writing.
The principal distinction between these and all other sporting works
lies in this, that such works in general treat only of game in the
field and flood, and the modes of killing it, while these are in great
part natural histories, containing minute and carefully digested
accounts of every specie of game, beast, bird, and fish, compiled from
Audubon, Wilson, Giraud, Godman, Agassiz, De Kay, and other
authorities, besides long disquisitions into their habits, times of
migration, breeding, &c., from the personal observation and experience
of the author. Any person is at once enabled by them to distinguish
between any two even closely allied species, and to adopt the proper
nomenclature, with a knowledge of the reason for it. The sporting
precepts are admitted, throughout the western country especially, to
be superior to all others, as well as the papers relating to the
breaking and the kennel and field management of dogs, &c. The same may
be said of what he has written of guns and gunnery. Mr. Herbert has
hunted, shot, and fished during the last twenty years in every state
of the Union, from Maine to Maryland, south of the great lakes, and
from below Quebec to the Sault St. Marie northward of them. Not having
visited the southern or south western states, the accounts of sporting
in those regions are collected from the writings or oral
communications of their best sportsmen, and on these points much
valuable new information, especially as to the prairie shooting and
the sports of the Rocky Mountains, will be contained in the new
edition of the _Field Sports_ to appear in the coming autumn.
Besides his contributions to romantic and sporting literature, Mr.
Herbert has written largely in criticism, he has done much as a poet,
and his capacities in classical scholarship have been illustrated by
some of the finest examples of Greek and Latin translation that have
appeared in our time. In the aggregate his works would now make
scarcely less than fifty octavo volumes.
As we have intimated, the portrait at the beginning of this article is
remarkably good. Mr. Herbert is about five feet ten high, of athletic
habits, and an untiring and fast walker; fond, of course, of all field
sports, especially horsemanship and shooting, and priding himself upon
killing as much if not more game than any other gentleman in the
country out of New-York.
[Illustration]
TRENTON FALLS
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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