18 MANUAL FOR TOTJNG SPORTSMEN. 



so soon as hunting ceased to be a laborious and painful 

 necessity, obligatory on the nomadic tribes for the support 

 of life, it came to be followed as a sport, to be the delight 

 of the warrior nobles, and, as game gradually became 

 scarce and rare, to be regarded as the privileged preroga- 

 tive of the crown. 



In the Bible, it is true, there is little mention of hunt- 

 ing, either as a method of procuring meat, or as a pursuit 

 of pleasure. Nimrod, the son of Cush, we are told, indeed, 

 was a mighty hunter before the Lord, but the probability 

 of the case would point to him as a destroyer of savage 

 beasts, like Hercules and Theseus in Hellenic fable, rather 

 than as one, 



With hound and horn his way who took 

 To drive the fallow deer ; 



even if we do not regard him, in the wider light, as a 

 hunter not of quadrupeds but of men, by the chase of 

 whom " he began to be a mighty one in the earth." 



Esau, again, we read of, somewhat as an exception 

 among the pastoral people, over whom he was born a 

 leader — although, partly in consequence of his addiction 

 to this pursuit, which with him clearly must have been a 

 sport rather than an occupation, he lost his hereditary 

 title — in the light, probably, of the first authenticated 

 hunter of the deer. There are, however, many natural 

 reasons, among which not the least is the sterile, rocky 

 and rugged face of the country which they inhabited, why 

 the children of Israel should never have acquired a taste 

 for, or proficiency in, field sports. The horse, whose plia- 



