I 



170 DEER-STALKING 



responsible members of Royal Commissions or 

 Parliamentary Committees ; and, thirdly, the possi- 

 bility of remedying the grievances of any class of the 

 community which may still exist as against owners 

 and occupiers of forests. 



It is no use denying that there has prevailed 

 for very many years a popular feeling, based largely 

 on sentiment, hostile to the enlargement of the area 

 devoted to deer, if not to their preservation even on 

 ground where they have been established from a 

 remote antiquity. An idea was entertained, which is 

 not lightly to be contemned, that in a thickly popu- 

 lated country it was not desirable to restrict the land 

 which was available for the production of beef and 

 mutton in order to turn it into a game preserve ; 

 while there were vague notions floating about that 

 whole regions had been depopulated in order to 

 secure their undisturbed occupation by wild animals. 



Thus, whenever any practical objection to deer 

 forests was started by any class of persons whose 

 interests were involved, these had no difficulty in 

 obtaining a share of popular support by no means 

 commensurate with the importance of those interests 

 or the numerical strength of their representatives. 



The first to take the field against deer and deer 

 forests were the large sheep-farmers. That they had 



