122 "TRESPASSERS" 



But to return to the game cart. The old fellow 

 who led the horse showed us the "bag" with some 

 pride. Here, prospectively, were jugged hare and 

 roast pheasant, to be discussed decently at the family 

 board. By our present code of Mutton-chop Ethics 

 the edible nature of any living being, always excepting 

 man, seems to justify its despatch, albeit not in such 

 wise as we had seen. We can well imagine a time 

 when our own ancesters regarded even a human steak 

 with similar feelings. Morality has its times and 

 places ; and, being here and now, it seems to us that 

 if killing is to be done at all, it should be with manly 

 exercise of the higher attributes of sportsmanship- 

 endurance, woodcraft, marksmanship, a fair giving of 

 " law " as against a lust of slaughter, and above all, 

 a sane judgement in all that concerns the preservation 

 of faunal types. For man, with his shifting moralities, 

 will pass, and higher standards of manliness and 

 morality prevail ; but howsoever these may excel 

 those at this time existing, the virtues of to-morrow 

 can never, in respect of lost types, retrieve the follies 

 of to-day. 



I should like to think that these or, indeed, any 

 words would command a moment's attention from 

 those responsible for the evil to which they refer. I 

 know, however, that such a hope is futile. Game- 

 preservers belong, as a rule, to a class to which 

 Nature appears chiefly under the aspect of property ; 

 it is a poetical term applied generally by people not 

 possessing land to the aggregate possessions of those 

 who do. Only exceptionally is any of this class 

 interested in the natural, as distinct from the com- 

 mercial and social, element of an estate. It is not 



