THE HUNTING INSTINCT IN MAN. Q 



inherited from our first parents, and that it is part of 

 " the hunting instinct " which has descended from 

 primeval times as part of man's savage nature. But 

 it is not the worse for that some of the finest traits 

 in human character being likewise traceable to the same 

 source. We see this hunting propensity illustrated 

 every day in those " sporting tastes " which seem to 

 be part of every man's nature, and which neither time, 

 nor education, nor the restraints of business, nor the 

 cares of family life have ever been able wholly to 

 eradicate in any class of the community. They burn 

 as strongly now, in the breast of the over-wrought 

 miner or city factory-hand, as in that of the proudest 

 lord of the soil or of the forest. Nor should this instinct 

 be regarded as degrading by the moralist; for it is 

 notorious that most of the world's greatest men have 

 generally been among the keenest sportsmen. Even 

 the great Napoleon solaced his exile in St. Helena by 

 occasionally going out with a gun.* The captious 

 critic, or the cynic, may affect to regard these things 

 as "a relic of barbarism," or to ridicule them as silly 

 romantic sentiment; but the fact will still remain that 

 the youth who is insensible to the joys of the chase, 

 or to the attractions of the field and the willow-margined 

 stream, as well as to the grandeur of the ocean or 

 the mountain, is seldom one destined to play a great 

 part in the world's history. 



The leaders of mankind have generally sprung from 

 the ranks of the most high-spirited and adventurous 



* See History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena. From 

 the letters and journals of the late Lieut. Gen. Sir Hudson Lowe, 

 and other official documents, by William Forsyth, 1853, Vol. iii, 

 pp. 206, 211 and 217. 



