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Grey Plover (Peewit each average)

and Peewit each average from POCHARD] 8 oz. to 10 oz., their condition depending upon the mildness or severity of the weather, and their consequent ability to procure a good supply or otherwise of their natural food.

No more characteristic illustrations of these birds can be obtained than Bewick's woodcuts, and these have therefore been reproduced.

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL.

J. E. HARTING. [The special description of the Peewit is by Sir Herbert Maxwell, the general treatment of the species by Mr. J. E. Harting. -ED.] POCHARD (Fuligula ferina). - In classifying the various species belonging to the duck family (Anatida), from a consideration of their habits correlated with structure, naturalists are wont to distinguish the surface-feeding ducks from the diving ducks, and to place the latter apart in a genus (Fuligula) which includes the pochard, white-eyed pochard, canvas-back, red-crested duck, scaup, tufted duck, and others. In the former group are included the common mallard, gadwall, shoveller, pintail, wigeon, and many others which at one time were all placed in the genus Anas, but which, from more detailed examination of their anatomy, and recognition of important differences of structure, have come to be Henry Slangard POCHARD. regarded as generically distinct, and are now placed in such genera at Spatula, Dafila, Mareca, &c.

The pochard (pronounced indifferently poachard, poakard, and pockard) may be taken as a typical diving duck of the subfamily Fuligulina-for we must here omit from consideration such aberrant forms of diving ducks as the Mergansers and Scoters. It is a sufficiently common and well-marked species to be easily identified; its red head, black breast, and silvery grey 35 г back, delicately pencilled with fine, wavy lines, serving to distinguish it at a glance from all the above-named species, except perhaps its larger relative the canvas-back duck of North America (Fuligula vallisneriana), which it somewhat resembles. Like other diving ducks, which are generally of stout build with comparatively short wings, it has a much larger lobe, or webbing, on the hind toe than any of the surface feeders a characteristic mark of distinction.

The females, and young males before they have moulted, are known to fowlers as "Dun birds," from their general colour, and in some parts of the coast as "Duncurres," cur" or "curre" being a general term amongst wildfowlers for diving ducks, although by some (e.g. Colonel Hawker) restricted to the scaup, Fuligula marila. ” ،“ Formerly the pochard was considered to be only a winter visitor to the British Islands, arriving in October and departing in March; and instances of its remaining to breed were extremely rare. But of late years the protection afforded to this and other freshwater ducks in spring, not only by statute, but also by private enterprise, has resulted in many pairs remaining here for the nesting season, and successfully bringing off their broods. Nevertheless, the majority of the pochards which are to be seen in flocks here during the winter months come to us from abroad, the species being a widely distributed one, and found nesting in Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Russia, though strangely enough not in Scandinavia.

On arrival in autumn, the flocks make straight for inland waters, where they may be found until March or April, sometimes in considerable numbers, in company with tufted ducks, or duck and mallard, and occasionally golden-eyes. In this respect they differ from wigeon, scaups, and scoters, which prefer salt water, and from the mergansers, which love tidal waters, where they can secure a better supply of fish, their staple diet.

The pochard being one of the best of ducks for the table, rivalling in this respect the far-famed "canvas-back" of North America, is much sought after by wildfowlers, and is generally killed by puntshooters, although in favourable localities it falls a prey at flight time to the long-shore gunners. The best accounts of this bird, from the shooter's point of view, will be found in Folkard's Wild Fowler (1864), and Sir R. Payne Gallwey's Fowler in Ireland (1882). Writing from personal experience, both these authors agree in stating that the pochard is by nature one of the most wary of wild-fowl, and though extremely numerous in some winters, when the flocks cover acres of water, on being approached they break up into smaller companies, and, after swimming away very low in the water, contrive either to keep out of gunshot, or by direct flight to evade all attempts to make a heavy shot at them with the punt-gun. ،، Seeing the difficulty of shooting them, the flight pond" with its artfully contrived nets was specially designed for the purpose of capturing these birds, their cunning being such that they elude the vigilance of the most skilful decoymen. It is true they will visit the decoys sometimes in large numbers, and may be even enticed into the pipes (see DECOYS), but they have a vexatious habit when pressed of diving back to the mouth of the pipe instead of rising on the wing and flying to the other end of it, and in this way they contrive to make good their escape.

The method of capturing them at the "flight pond" is well described, with an illustration, by Folkard, in the work above mentioned, to which the reader may be referred, since it is too long to be quoted here in extenso. Briefly stated, a net is so fixed with poles, cords, and pulleys that when the birds are flushed and fly towards it, it is suddenly hoisted so as to intercept their flight, and numbers fall into its meshes. To give an idea of the immense flights which used to be taken in the nets at Mersea and Goldhanger in Essex, Folkard states that the bulk of birds has there been known to be so great that when their flight has been intercepted their mass has actually been heavier than the ponderous boxes of weights placed at the lower ends of the poles for hoisting the net, and the consequence has been that the birds have borne down the net and partly spoiled the fowler's sport.

At these same decoys (Mersea and Goldhanger) the capture of "dun-birds," as they are there termed, has been so great that a wagon and four horses were required to remove them from the pond; and they have fallen in such heaps on striking the net that many of those at the bottom of the pens were taken up dead, apparently crushed or stifled by the pressure of those above.

From five to six hundred "dun-birds" at one pull of the net was formerly considered but a moderate capture, and to break the neck of every bird in that number would occupy three experienced men twenty minutes.

Mr. Page, the owner of one of the oldest decoys in Essex, "the Marsh House Decoy," on Bradwell Marsh, has furnished some POCHARD interesting statistics concerning the visits of the pochard, which will be found in Sir R.

Payne Gallwey's Book of Decoys (1886), and for details as to the shooting of these birds by puntsmen and coast-gunners, the reader may be referred to Mr. Henry Sharp's Practical Wildfowling (1895); Mr.

Abel Chapman's First Lessons in the Art of Wildfowling (1896), and to the Diary of Colonel Peter Hawker (2 vols., 1893), whose Instructions to Young Sportsmen has passed through several editions, and has proved an invaluable text-book to all who delight in the sport of wildfowling.

J. E. HARTING.

POLO, Its Development. First of all let me endeavour to show, in a brief space, the recent growth of polo in all parts of the world. Beginning with England, it is well to bear in mind that it was only in 1869 that the game was first played here. The officers of an Hussar regiment, who knocked a billiard ball over the turf at Aldershot with hockey sticks, and called it polo, could scarcely have foreseen the remarkable spread of popularity of the game which was to follow their early efforts. Its advance is all the more noteworthy in view of the fact that polo must necessarily be confined to a comparatively small number of men who are sufficiently good horsemen and can afford to play. It can never be a "popular" game in the sense that various other ball games are. But there are few more fascinating pastimes, and the great crowds which foregather at the London clubs, or at Rugby, Dublin, and other country clubs, show conclusively that this branch of sport makes a very powerful appeal from the spectacular standpoint.

Nor is the game yet fully developed from the onlooker's point of view, and a time may come when a portion of the grounds of one or two of the now strictly private London clubs will be thrown open to anyone willing to pay for admission. Clubs of the World. - In 1910 there were three great polo clubs on the south-western outskirts of London-Hurlingham (with two grounds), Ranelagh (with three match grounds and a practice ground), and Roehampton (with three grounds). There was a private ground at Gunnersbury on the estate of Mr. Leopold de Rothschild, and Southfields was the headquarters of the Brigade of Guards Club, with two grounds.

In another direction there was the Kingsbury Club with two grounds; and play also took place on the station ground at Wembley Park. The County Polo Association had a membership of thirty-six affiliated clubs, POLO] and there were more than twenty private or service clubs in England. In Ireland the All-Ireland Club played at Phenix Park, Dublin, and eight clubs were affiliated to the Irish County Polo Club Union. Even more pronounced, however, than its growth in the British Isles has been the rapid progress of polo abroad. Within little more than a decade clubs have sprung up in all parts of the Continent. In 1910 France had at least four clubs devoted to the game, and Germany six, while there were also flourishing clubs in Spain, Belgium, Russia, and Hungary. Egypt had several clubs, and there was one at Malta. A club existed in Casa Blanca, Morocco. In Australia, mounted. But when and where the first actual game was played are interesting points entirely lost in the mists of Time.

What we do know is that polo is at least as old as the laws of the Medes and Persians, for in the records of the epic poet Firdusi (beginning of the eleventh century, who lived a hundred years before Omar Khayyam) there are frequent allusions to this game as played centuries before his own time. Persians possess rich literary treasures in poetry, history, and geography, and it seems that sport was thought by the early poets to be not unworthy of something more than passing reference. In Firdusi's celebrated Shanameh (Book of Kings) in A GAME IN PROGRESS AT HURLINGHAM.

South Africa, Canada, and even on the West Coast of Africa there was every indication of the game becoming increasingly popular. There are nearly forty polo clubs in the United States of America, while in India, which may still be called the home of polo, in spite of the spread of the game elsewhere, about sixty clubs were affiliated to the Indian Polo Association. At the same date there were twenty-two clubs in Argentina, about sixty in Australia, sixteen in New Zealand, and two in Chile. These bald facts will enable the reader to realise that polo has become a sport of world-wide interest.

Antiquity of the Game. It is impossible to place any limit to the antiquity of polo.

Naturally there is much difficulty in tracing the precise progress of the game over a period of more than two thousand years, but there is evidence to show that it was played long before the beginning of the Christian era. One may suppose that not long after men began to ride horses they found a means of vigorous enjoyment and healthy rivalry in the hitting of a ball while VOL. III [Photograph by Sport and General. 6,000 couplets, sometimes called the Iliad of Persia, is told the story of the first international polo match as played between the Iranians and the Turanians. Seemingly there were seven players a-side, and it is easy to imagine that the match aroused as much excitement as those international contests did at Hurlingham many centuries later between England and America. There are references to the combination of players, which make us believe that "team play was w thought of no less highly in those remote days than it is at the present time. وو Points of Similarity. From the year 600 B.c., and perhaps before, the game flourished in the East. And it is remarkable to observe certain points of similarity between the ancient and the modern game.

Very old drawings in the British Museum and elsewhere indicate unmistakably that there is much in common between the polo of the two periods. Even the hammerheaded sticks used by the Persian players were not very dissimilar from those to be seen at Hurlingham and Ranelagh to-day, as anyone may judge for himself by refer- A A ring to the illustration of "Polo in Persia:

Siawusch playing before Afrasiah," reproduced in Mr. T. F. Dale's "Polo Past and Present." In the reign of Chosroes II. (591-628) the ladies of the Persian Court appear to have engaged in polo. The King looked on, it is recorded, at a game in which the competitors were women. Here again history has repeated itself, for early in the twentieth century a polo match between ladies was contested at the Ranelagh Club, her Majesty Queen Alexandra being a spectator. The game at Ranelagh was farcical, showing very clearly that of all pastimes polo is one of the least suitable for the fair sex, though in these days of "ARTHUR," A CHAMPION WEIGHT-CARRYING POLO PONY. riding astride one cannot foretell how quickly another attempt may be made by women to emulate men in this direction.

Probably the ladies' match before Chosroes II. was got up merely by way of a novelty, and the Persian poets are silent in regard to the further participation by women in this strenuous game.

In Byzantium and China. - The Mohammedan conquerors of Persia took up polo with some keenness, and at Byzantium, too, the game was regularly played, though under different methods from those followed in Persia. The sticks of the Byzantine players, for example, had a round racquet at the end instead of the wooden head used by the Persians. At Byzantium, again, a leathern ball was used, and it was this style of game which found its way into Japan, being possibly taken there by the Korean Tartars. It flourished among the people as well as among the Samurais of [POLO Japan. There is reason to believe that polo ago, and its records in China go back just was played in Japan one thousand years as far. Professor E. H. Parker has told us that in the year 717 Khoten sent as a tributary" present to the Chinese Court 66 ،، a couple of horses for playing at ball," it being probable that the game had been introduced to Khoten by the Turks. In the year 821 the reigning Emperor succumbed to an illness which attacked him suddenly while playing polo, but this did not prevent his successor from being equally enthusiastic for the game. In 827 an official of the province of Shan Tung sent a present of polo donkeys and four renowned polo players to the Court, and the Emperor lost no time in "setting the army and the Histrionic artists to make sides for a game of donkey polo." In the Histrionic School of that period, it should be explained, five hundred youths were trained in acting, music, athletics, and other accomplishments calculated, as Professor Parker puts it, to contribute to the menus plaisirs of the luxurious Chinese Court.

Origin of Polo in India. From Persia polo, or chaugán as it was then called, not unnaturally passed to Central Asia. In Thibet the game was played a great deal, and it is from the Thibetan word pulu, meaning a ball made from the knot of willow wood, that the name "polo" is derived.

In India the hard-riding natives of Manipur became specially expert in the game. "To the Manipuris and their neighbours," wrote Major F. Herbert in his article in the first edition of the ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF SPORT, we owe a deep debt of gratitude for having preserved the game from extinction when it disappeared from Southern India with the decline of the Mogul power. It is a curious problem why a game that was India should have so utterly disappeared, once so popular throughout the whole of and remained extinct until reintroduced by our native frontier forces during the nineteenth century." It is conjectured that the Manipuris are the descendants of a Tartar colony from China, which may possibly account for their excellence in polo. In any case, their skill is great, and was the more pronounced just after the Indian Mutiny, when polo was only beginning to become popular among the Europeans. In February, 1864, a team of Manipuris visited Calcutta to demonstrate their skill, and from that date polo began to go ahead throughout India. Soldiers, civilians, and native nobles took up the game with eagerness, and in 1877 the Indian Regimental Tournament was established.

POLO] In India Now. -The governing body is the Indian Polo Association (founded in 1891), whose Championship Cup in recent years has been played for at Calcutta during the Christmas race week. Unfortunately READY FOR PLAY. MR. R. GRENFELL'S "Gozo." for the representative character of the tournament, this date falls in the middle of the military training season, so that few of the best soldier teams are able to make the long journeys to Calcutta. Thus it comes about that the Inter-Regimental Tournament is still the greatest event of Indian polo; it is played in March each year at Meerut. There are many brilliant players among the natives, and the Jodpur, Ulwar, Patiala, Golconda, and other native teams compete in some of the open and local tournaments. The military clubs in India take their polo very seriously, and the training of teams is regarded as an important and weighty business. Soldiers in India have less opportunity for shooting and racing than was formerly the case, and they are accordingly paying increasing attention to the game. The consequence is that there is more good polo there to-day than ever there was. A sequel not altogether satisfactory, but perhaps inevitable, is that the price of good polo ponies has gone up by leaps and bounds. The pony you could have bought for Rs. 500 in 1881 would have cost you from Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 1,800 to buy in 1900, and probably Rs. 2,000, Rs. 2,500, or Rs. 3,000 in 1911. Yet there are still plenty of moderate-priced animals to be bought by players willing to go to the trouble of making their own ponies. Arabs, walers (from Australia), country-breds, and ponies from England-all will be seen in good-class Indian polo.

The Game for Soldiers. - General Kavanagh, who was in command of a poloplaying regiment in India, declares that polo is part of the military education of officers, and particularly mounted officers, and in India is by far the best game they can take up, as it is always at their door, available all the year round, and need not be expensive if they break and train their own ponies. "The mere fact of learning how to do this," adds General Kavanagh, "is a valuable education to mounted officers, and the actual game itself brings out all the best qualities of young officers, needing pluck, determination, quickness, and decision, and, above all, that instinctive sense of playing for their side and not for themselves, which is such a valuable quality in a soldier, whatever arm he may belong to." English players in India miss the green turf of the clubs at home, but the grounds there are hard and true, and, as a rule, faster than English grounds, which are so apt to become badly cut up and lumpy in a wet summer. In recent years the rules of the Hurlingham and the Indian Polo Association have been brought into line in many places where they formerly differed.

There are, however, still various points of variance. The grounds are not protected by boards, as at home, so that play is more in the centre of the ground, each player doing what he can to prevent the ball from going over the side-lines. The limit of height for ponies is 14 hds. I in.

Introduction in England. It has already been mentioned that polo was first 66 COBNUT," A FAMOUS LIGHT-WEIGHT PONY, PLAYED BY MR. H. P. WHITNEY, OF AMERICA. played in England in 1869. Three officers of the 10th Hussars were the first to take it up-namely, Messrs. St. Quintin, ،، Chicken " Hartopp, and Chaine. In a magazine article, Colonel St. Quintin AA2 explains how it came about. "One day in 1869," he writes, " when the 10th were under canvas at Aldershot for the summer drills, 'Chicken' Hartopp, lying back in a chair after luncheon reading the Field, exclaimed, 'By Jove, this must be a good [POLO used were in form like those used for hockey, of ash, and crooked at the end, and with these the ball was often struck a considerable distance. The distance between the goal posts was a little under 200 yards, and, the players having taken up positions AMERICAN PONIES AT RANELAGH. A SHAMPOO BETWEEN THE PERIODS OF PLAY. game!' and read 6 us a description of hockey on horseback' in India." Their chargers, some sticks with crooked ends, and a billiard ball were at once requisitioned, with what result need not be described. It was soon seen that ponies were necessary, and when a number had been obtained from Ireland the game was taken up in earnest.

The 10th Hussars found keen rivals in the 9th Lancers, who were then quartered at