300 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



those days say to the wholesale slaughter of 

 hand-fed pheasants and of driven grouse that 

 now goes on ? This may be good Shooting, but 

 it is not Sport; because it is an essential con- 

 dition of sport that fair * law ' must be given 

 to the game, and this is not the case in battue- 

 shooting and grouse-driving. 1 He was a far 

 truer sportsman who told Gilbert White how, 

 when the eighteenth century was still young, 

 and ' the beechen woods were much more exten- 

 sive than at present, the number of wood- 

 pigeons was astonishing ; that he has often 

 killed near twenty in a day.' Much more con- 

 sistent, also, with the true idea of sport is the 

 stalking of deer in the treeless forests of the 

 Scottish moors ; but the Continental method of 

 walking up, or of first marking down and then 

 lying in wait for wild boar, red deer, and roe- 

 bucks in the woods, is a truer form of sport than 

 that in which successful pursuit of the quarry 

 is usually dependent on rifles having a con- 

 siderable range. The stalking of the roebuck 

 is certainly one of the most enjoyable forms 



1 We fear we cannot go the lengths that Dr. Nisbet does in 

 this matter. EDS. 



