NATIVES AND WAPITI 201 



so-called sportsmen of a civilised nation who per- 

 mit the wholesale destruction of a noble beast for 

 purely fictitious reasons. One feels nothing but 

 disgust for a class of persons without a single sport- 

 ing instinct, the majority of whom, never having 

 seen a wild deer in their lives, are, nevertheless, re- 

 sponsible for the destruction of one of the finest of 

 created animals. In the case of the native hunter 

 it is a different matter. 



One can appreciate the reasons which prompt a 

 half-civilised barbarian to give vent to his natural 

 love of hunting when by doing so he can realise far 

 more by the death of a single animal for a good 

 pair of wapiti horns in the velvet will fetch as 

 much as 50 or 60 taels (7 to 8) than he could 

 otherwise in all the rest of the year. 



A feeling of resentment is, however, aroused in 

 the mind of the Anglo-Saxon when he reflects that 

 neither age nor sex is spared, that the native hunter 

 is merely out for blood and filthy lucre, and esti- 

 mates his success, not by the magnificence of his 

 trophy, but by its commercial value as reduced to 

 avoirdupois. After all, it is his own country, to 

 which one comes as an alien. The feeling of re- 

 sentment may be illogical, but human nature is not 

 governed by logic. 



According to the old hunters, even within their 

 own lifetime, a noticeable decrease has taken place 

 in the numbers of the wapiti. Had the natives the 

 advantage of modern rifles and good glasses though 

 the latter is a minor consideration, for they all 

 have wonderful sight there is no doubt that the 

 wapiti of China would have gone the way of the 

 dodo, the quagga, and other extinct forms of animal 



