72 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



struck down bv the hawks, and the slowest find 

 their way to dealers. He then goes on as follows : 



" And, during the summer season, thousands 

 weekly are shot at the pigeon-shooting clubs in 

 this country, where aristocratic gunners stand 

 with double-barrelled guns, twenty-five yards 

 from the traps, and think they are worthy of the 

 title of sportsmen if they succeed in butchering 

 their prey in this ignoble manner. I am no 

 maudlin sentimentalist ; I know that Nature is 

 prodigal of life, and that of every twenty pigeons 

 born, not more than one can be allowed to arrive 

 at maturity and increase its kind, or the world 

 would soon be overstocked with pigeons, but 

 this does not increase my respect for their 

 slayers. I believe the best possible use you can 

 put a deliberate murderer to is to hang him, 

 pour encourager les autres ; but this belief does 

 not raise the hangman to the dignity of a 

 gentleman in my estimation ; nor can I see any 

 more true sport or manly dignity in the per- 

 formance of a languid swell who backs himself 

 to kill forty-five pigeons out of fifty, his valet- 

 de-chambre loading his gun, than in that of the 

 vulgar snob who wagers that he will kill and 

 dress a dozen sheep in less time than any other 

 butcher — gambling, not sporting, is the aim 

 of both." 



The book ends, too, with a characteristic touch, 

 and as it deals with Tegetmeier's w^ell-known 

 advocacy of Intelligence as against Instinct in 

 the homing faculty of pigeons, I venture to give 

 the paragraph — the only reference to the subject 

 for w r hich I have space. He winds up the last 

 chapter by saying: " I have paid much attention 



