

216 STAG-HUNTING 



and deer are apt, when their strongholds lie far apart, 

 to make points for distant covers in a way that renders 

 the task of a second horseman difficult enough, and 

 would reduce that of a dismounted whip in charge 

 of a relay of hounds to an impossibility. 



Moreover, wild animals except deer were extermi- 

 nated in England long since, so the woodcraft which 

 has been fostered abroad by the survival of the boar and 

 the wolf has not had in this country the same chance 

 of justifying its existence and making itself useful. 



It is recorded ' that King Francis I. and Sir 

 Thomas Fitzwilliam, after a long discussion of the 

 English and French methods of harbouring and 

 hunting deer, agreed to differ as to the merits of the 

 two systems. This looks as if there had been some 

 recognised distinctions in the practice of the two 

 countries, though of these there is no trace in the old 

 English works on the subject. One of the joint 

 authors of the first sporting book in our language was 

 a Frenchman, and little is said in it about stag-hunting. 

 Its successors, from the ' Mayster of the Game,' written 

 for Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III., till Dr. 

 Collyns published the ' Chase of the Wild Red Deer,' 

 in 1860, are all practically translations from the 

 French ; and I cannot ascertain that there was any dif- 



1 Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII., vol. i., No. 1160. 



