10 Introduction. 



literary point of view, are many works even more recently 

 issued. In truth, the ancient fire appears to have almost 

 burnt out, and such light as is shed by the glow of dying 

 embers shows that the love of sport which animated such 

 writers as Scrope and Colquhoun no longer burns within 

 the breast of the modern sportsman-author. Scotch shooting 

 appears more as a fashion, deerstalking a function, and 

 grouse-shooting an exhibition in which the society man, 

 and often the society woman, is expected to share. It 

 would be wrong to attribute the change to the want of 

 skill in the writers ; they do but reflect the tendency of 

 the times. Indications are not wanting to show that the 

 special craving, or that stimulus to action which only the 

 sport of shooting can appease, no longer occurs with the 

 frequency it did half a century ago. Shooting is now but a 

 means to an end : the end may be some social excitement 

 among a country house party, or it may be the collection 

 of a wild Thibetan camel for a natural history museum ; 

 but the prompting does not arise purely from the love of 

 sport, as it once did, if our authors are to be believed. To 

 many, a life of adventure is a necessity : when the shooting 

 of large game is also a way of earning money, no wonder 

 men enter into the business as upon any other career ; but 

 to large game hunting for commercial purposes an end will 

 quickly come unless game is more efficiently protected than 

 was the American bison. The percentage of sportsmen 

 to whom the agony of a buffalo dropped to their rifle is 

 a sight to remember with pleasure, is small, and to the 

 majority of these a stalk in Chillingham Park would 

 probably be as pleasurable as an expedition to Central 

 Africa. On the other hand, there is a very large and 

 rapidly growing community for whom all things living in a 

 state of nature have a powerful attraction. To many men 

 it would afford more real enjoyment to get close to a herd 



