18 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



these tilings tlian we do, and may be able to 

 ex2)lain tlic strange contingencies wliicli sometimes 

 occm^ ; such, for instance, as that before quoted by 

 me Avith regard to the internal structure of the 

 doc, and her power to carry a double burden, 

 dead and alive — a j^ower which pertains to no 

 other creature that we know of. 



During the six years that I was employed in the 

 destruction of the deer in the Eoyal New Forest, 

 such things as the above were often brought 

 under my eye, for the Whig Government ordained 

 that everything of the deer kind should be at once 

 slain, without regard to age, sex, or condition. 



Before this book concludes, I may have to 

 allude to Darwinian theories again, and to glaring 

 mistakes in ornithology. In his work, so far as 

 it has gone, I see nothing to shake my present 

 conviction that if we, the human race, ever were 

 apes or monkeys, and if what Darwin calls 

 '^ sexual selection " induced us to get rid of our 

 tails, when we lost those truth-telling appendages 

 we, at the same time, were dispossessed of our 

 sincerity* 



" Thougli wagging talcs of men on fiction borrow, 

 'The (diis of dogs arc true in joy and sorrow." 



