SOCIAL AND ECONOMICAL ASPECTS 177 



give away as many legs of mutton as shooting tenants 

 do haunches of venison ? ' ' Certainly I do,' replied 

 the undaunted witness. I don't think I pursued the 

 subject any further. 



Another episode in connection with this Committee 

 in which I also came off second best may amuse my 

 readers. A well-known member of it, who repre- 

 sented a constituency in East Anglia, asked me one 

 day in the lobby of the House of Commons to ex- 

 plain to him the process by which a new forest was 

 made, as he had not quite understood it as given by 

 one of the witnesses. I told him it was very simple 

 that all you had to do was to remove the sheep, and 

 if there were any existing deer forests in the district, 

 by careful nursing, the ground would get stocked in a 

 few years from outside. 'Oh, I see,' he said. ' It is 

 as if I took a farm in Norfolk and, instead of buying 

 cattle and sheep, simply opened my gates and collared 

 those of my neighbours.' I told him the cases were 

 quite different that the sheep and cattle to which he 

 referred were private property, while deer were ferce 

 nature?, and belonged to no one in particular. ' I 

 quite understand all about that,' he rejoined ; ' but is 

 it not a fact that practically deer are the property of 

 the man on whose ground they are found to this 

 extent, that he and no one else has a right to shoot 



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