176 DEER-STALKING 



selected, as usual, from both political parties, and 

 containing among their number gentlemen, some Con- 

 servative and some Liberal, who were specially inter- 

 ested in agriculture, and supposed to be more or 

 less opposed to the practice of game-preserving. 



Some of the witnesses showed extreme hostility 

 towards deer forests, and in their eagerness to de- 

 nounce everything connected with these institutions 

 considerably overshot the mark, damaging instead of 

 furthering their cause, as the following amusing inci- 

 dent will show. 



I was examining one of these witnesses who had 

 been urging the well-worn but now disproved argu- 

 ment, that the substitution of deer for sheep limited to 

 an appreciable extent the food supply of the nation. 

 Thinking I had him in a corner, I asked whether he 

 would not admit that, at all events, venison was whole- 

 some food, whether he would deny that it was con- 

 sumed by some one or other, often by those who 

 otherwise never tasted meat all the year round, and 

 how the fact of its being given away instead of sold to 

 the butcher made any difference so far as his theory 

 was concerned ? Mistaking, inadvertently or otherwise, 

 the point of my question, the witness replied that sheep- 

 farmers were also generous in this respect. ' What ! ' 

 I rejoined, ' do you mean to say that sheep-farmers 



