GAME LAWS. Soe 
their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the 
peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed or 
trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for a 
whole family ; and the simple driving out of such animals from 
this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the 
rustic, who had endeavored to save his children’s bread from 
their voracity. “ At all times,” says Paul Louis Courier, speak- 
ing in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the “ Simple 
Discours,” “the game has made war upon us. Paris was block- 
aded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so 
rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the game- 
keepers.” * The Tiers Etat declared, in 1789, “the most ter- 
* The following details from Bonnemére will serve to give a more complete 
‘idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The 
officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and 
weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John’s day (24th 
June), in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It 
was unlawful to fence-in any grourcds in the plains where royal residences 
were situated ; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, bar- 
ley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground-nets for catching the birds which 
consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to 
cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail 
might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine 
of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount 
for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for Sve 
years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.—Wistotre des Paysans, ii., 
p. 202, text and notes. 
Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity 
of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching. ‘‘ The 
game laws,” says Clavé, ‘‘have not delivered us from the poachers, who kill 
twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of Fontainebleau, 
as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very common and a very 
profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers are on the alert night 
and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow the trade begin by care- 
fully studying the habits of the game. They will lie motionless on the 
ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole days, watching the paths 
most frequented by the animals,” etc.—Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 
160. 
The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as there 
are ‘‘ beggars on horseback’ in South America, there are poachers in carriages 
in France. 
28 
