WILD STAG-HUNTING. 183 



way, a man who goes for these two things is as some one once 

 said of Wordsworth, very nearly a sjDortsman. Never mind 

 Avhat motive takes a man to the chase of the wild red deer (even 

 if it be only for once, and he, coming back, pronounces the whole 

 thing dead slow, and swears he will never go again), let him 

 be a man of average sense, and I will lay my life he returns a 

 better sportsman for what he has seen. There is no more hope- 

 ful sign for sport at the present day than the increasing love 

 manifested year by year for the once-prized chase of our an- 

 cestors. During the two past decades succeeding the intro- 

 duction of railways, its doom was almost sealed. Now the 

 reaction has come, and I believe even the most prosaic amongst 

 us admit that man was not sent into the world wholly to spin 

 cotton and amass gold. We see that there is a time to work 

 and a time to play, and, like sensible people as we are, wdien in 

 our right minds, we have caught up again one of those playthings 

 which, from the time man became a carnivorous animal, has been 

 his chief delight. From the earliest ages all nations appear to 

 have had a love (I might almost say a veneration) for the deer. 

 The stag was looked upon not like the camel, the ass, the sheep, 

 or the goat, as the slave of man, but as a noble quarry, exulting 

 in his freedom, difficult to subdue, and conferring honour on him 

 who could boast of having achieved the conquest. From patri- 

 archal days liis flesh has been esteemed a delicacy. Was not 

 the capture of the Arcadian hind one of the allotted labours of 

 Hercules 1 thus proving that the ancients set much store on the 

 skill and strength which could outstrip or circumvent an animal 

 of this glorious species. Neither were they wrong in selecting 

 the hind instead of the stag. There is a world of truth and 

 wisdom in those old Pagan stories, let us be as sceptical of their 

 origin as we may. Danae is not the only virgin who has been 

 lost in a shower of gold, and Arthur Heal would tell us to the 

 present day that a hind will cut out far more work for his five- 

 and-twenty inch flyers than the best stag that ever frayed antler, 

 and take more catching than even a four-year-old male deer, 



