FEATS OF GREAT SPORTSMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 41, 13 March 1909, Page 3

FEATS OF GREAT SPORTSMEN.

Arc Hie spurting records 01 to-day as «ood as those of our grcat-grandlathers < \re tUe sportsmen of to-day, on the noiut of skill and endurance, to be winpared with those of the past when we consider modern improvements and modern conditions! Has anvbody, for instance, ever availed the'great catch of salmon made by the tenth Lord Home, in Apn, 1, Jj>< Mr. C. ti. Barrington, who tells the ''"iVwas'a rainy day with an cast «ind, and Lord Home caught tJurty-six salmon, weighing from 61b to 3tdb. Apa from liic amazing luck ut the day, the fact is memorable for the mere powci. of endurance displayed. Lord Uo me „scd to hsl, villi a short rod-he though lift was the best length lor a salmon rod-ami a thick hair lif, so that the actual exertion of casing wouhl not ihave been so great as it would be with alTftorlSilrW. For that mate,- 100 1,0 must have done comparatively little | casting; he must have been nearly a dav long playing the thirly-ix hsh. But his* is a record which the increase of Setting has pr-.bal.lj- established as impossible to beat.' WKD UAL-ÜBSBLKY'S RECORD 6oi„g on to shooting, has anybody ever beaten the record of the second Lord -Malmesbury'i "lie kept a uienorandum of evcrv sl,ol he bred fo foiti veurs, ending with the year 18-111. tit ilrcd 5-VJS7 shots, killed 38,451 head o „ IBC , aad missed 10,533 times; besides th he calculated the distance which walked, whk-h would do credit to ■ud-worked post-man. He was out, Ukauotlier four lioiirsii Ihour, W that m the foity »u » 4 3 , in the vear, but how many m u tuVwalkeven thirty .lays keep a «cj»rt ,f "verv cartridge iired-more, for Lod even noted down every kuid ' of "nine that he tired at. ° A WONDiSKI'I'L .SHOT. ' Then there is the extraordinary ™ : t .dinn>«rk- m who in a pigeon match with Loid JUC ' on d "ave five vards and Mien won the . " wthaUdaroflnty-twop,geo:,s shots at thirty„nk Auolicr cxtraoidmaiy feat no ". heuuentlv performed was that he would , „„ out and kill as many as twenty swallows before breakfast. It was ltoss who offered to walk anylwdy to London for s JC3UO, and nobody would accept the j challenge. KKATS OF FAMOUS EIDERS. - Hard riding was another achievement e in which our great-grandfathers oxV celled. '-Squire o>baldostoue rode 200 s miles in under nine hours on relays of n Horses, and wanted to back limself to * ride the distance in eight hours. A '. queerer test, according to our standards was the matijh arranged between g Horatio Ross, ridinjr his horse Clinker .-. a"ainst Lord Kennedy's Kadital. ridden .'- by (iipluin Douglas. Ross knockei r- Houglas bead over heels over a gale, a' r. (he "riders had agreed that jostling d fliarging. a-ul crotisftfir were to lie al y lowed at the jumps aTfff anywhere else .'<■ Those -conditions of raoimj do not be a long to our day. but the hardihood ha: s, nof left modern polo grounds. Every n- bodv knows the story of the polo playe with a broken collar-bone who rode of i" his man apa in and again as if notion: '■l hiul happened,"