[FOX-HUNTING] [FASCISM] POLLARD, H.B.C. [Hugh Bertie Campbell]

The Mystery of Scent: a Practical Contribution to its Solution, For All Hunting People

London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937. First Edition. First impression. Octavo. Red cloth hardcover; dustjacket; xx,[1]-139pp. Tight, clean, straight copy, Very Good or better. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced 10s. 6d. net on front flap), complete but toned on spine panel with general overall rubbing and soil, just VG.

An attempt to solve the "age-old problem of scent" among foxhunters (this cataloguer, for one, can smell them a mile away) and to "work out a perfectly simple instrument which will tell the hunting man exactly the percentage of chances of scent on any day at any time." Pollard, in addition to being an avid huntsman, was a British Special Operations officer, an early member of MI6, and the author of numerous works on small arms, a subject in which he was a recognized expert. In reviewing Pollard's colorful if rather dubious career, it occurs to us that being smelt ought to have been fairly low on his list of worries: during the Irish War he conducted two legendarily byzantine and ultimately bungled false flag campaigns against the Nationalists; some years afterwards, in the Spanish Civil War, taking the side of the Fascists, he served as Franco's personal courier and later defended the bombing of Guernica as "a perfectly legitimate target." Stench enough there to put an entire county's worth of vulpine citizens on high alert.

Price: $75.00

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