100 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



In another work published at Frankfort-on-the-Maine 

 in the year 1661, it is also said: — "At last, when the 

 chamois can go no further, and the hunter is about to 

 throw or thrust it down from the precipice, if he draweth 

 his knife and will thrust the same into it, the chamois 

 pusheth its own body with force upon the knife ; where- 

 upon it is caught, and falleth downwards from a great 

 height. The skin remaineth generally quite unbroken."* 

 The same old writer tells us : — " Some hunters do drink 

 the blood and the fat, that they may thereby obtain a 

 steady head and freedom from giddiness when they come 

 to steep places, and when they must hold on very firmly." 



It is not at all unlikely that these properties were 

 attributed to the animal's blood ; for the hunter, like all 

 men who live much with Nature, and make companion- 

 ship with her various aspects, is by no means free from 

 superstition. At the present day even the peasantry of 

 Bavaria consider a certain part of the stag, when dried 

 and powdered, a potent remedy in diseases of the bladder ; 

 and the resinous-looking drops which are found in the 

 corners of the hart's eyes, called by some the "tears" of 

 the stag, are looked upon by many as a sure specific in 

 various disorders. 



Strange are the shifts to which it is said the chamois- 

 hunter is sometimes put, when, like the animal he is in 

 pursuit of, " he can go no further." The author of the 

 'New and Perfect Art of Venery/ who has given so 



* This is true. Though the body be never so bruised, the skin always 

 remains whole. It is also a peculiarity of the skin of a chamois that it 

 is of the same thickness throughout. By this you may always dis- 

 tinguish- it from other skins, which are much thinner in some places than 

 in others. Dealers who wish to palm off doe for chamois leather assist 

 the deception by cutting a slit in some part and sewing the hole up again , 

 such being always found in real chamois-skins where the ball has passed. 

 If however you feel the skins carefully, you can hardly be deceived. 



