DEER-SHOOTING AND OTHER MATTERS. 83 



nocturnal -visits, and notwithstanding that either a man 

 or woman remains in the fields all night howling, 

 rattling sticks together, firing off matchlocks, or pull- 

 ing a number of rattles at the same time, in different 

 directions, by means of strings led away from their 

 centre post, so pertinacious are these animals during 

 the dark hours that by some means they manage to get 

 in, and eat and destroy all before them. During the 

 day they take to the large woods and thick coverts, 

 but I have also very frequently come across them in 

 the open, and at midday, grazing in, no doubt, a feeling 

 of perfect security on these mountain slopes. The 

 inhabitants of some parts of the Goto Islands told 

 me they seldom got half their crops of corn and sweet 

 potatoes in before the other half or more was destroyed 

 by deer, wild boar, and pheasants ; and I do not think 

 they were much wrong in their calculation. In days 

 gone by the Japanese hunter was a vara avis. He 

 was generally the shoemaker of the village, and lived 

 somewhere on the skirts of his native hamlet. He 

 was a blood-taker, a destroyer of life, and consequently 

 tabooed from the society of his fellows. This is 

 Buddhism. The skin of the animal was what he 

 wanted to make the sole of a strong walking sandal. 

 Now-a-days the huntsmen — or perhaps sportsmen they 



