It's an overview of many different recreational topics. Of particular interest, it covers: Bowling and Tennis (both only briefly, I'd afraid); Riding and Racing; the Science of Defense (that is, fencing); and Ringing of the Bells (
miraclaire, are you listening?). It also has sections on Military Discipline and a bunch of sections of Things You Do With Animals (Hunting, Hawking, Angling, etc). Neat little book, and worth checking out. My only real annoyance is that the frontispiece clearly shows a couple of people playing at billiards, but the book fails to actually deal with the topic; humph.While I'm at it, my nominee for the latest Amusingly Useless Book: Ars grammaticae Iaponicae linguae, a 1638 grammar of Japanese -- written in Latin...
