i 82 
NATURE NOTES. 
pigeon-shooting and rabbit-coursing, a blow must be struck at 
the hunting down of tame stags by the classes. 
It is needless to harrow the feelings of our readers with a 
lengthy and detailed description of the sufferings inflicted on 
the unhappy animals, but some (though not among the members 
of the Selborne Society) are ready to bolster up the appointment 
on the pretext that the State thereby recognises the inherent 
and ineradicable love of “ sport ” in the English nation. The 
following quotation from the Star shows to what extent real 
sport is a factor in these proceedings in the neighbourhood of 
the Royal borough : — 
The exact date of the “ catch ” is always kept a profound secret. The officials 
like to steer clear of the “ London division ” on that day. The men employed are 
not warned until the morning of the event, when the grooms of the royal stables 
at Windsor take the Queen’s horses out for exercise. Windsor Great Park is the 
common rendezvous, especially when the mushrooms are about. The grooms 
wait to see a few piles of hurdles set down about Cranbourne paddocks, and then 
they' scamper off to Windsor, Eton, Datchet, Old Windsor — in fact, to every 
place near the Royal borough — to tell the news. 
The writer goes on to say that in this way all the ne’er-do- 
wells in and around the Royal Borough get their information 
and are up betimes to see the “sport.” After stating that he 
has seen the stags caught, and the stags hunted, and can truth- 
fully say that the one practice is as infamous as the other, he 
continues : — 
During the month of October the red deer are in their prime. They stand 
erect, with their splendid antlers branching out from their proud heads. This is 
the time when they are cornered and caged for Her Majesty’s hunt. The nets are 
spread, the hurdles raised, and there follows the mad howling of horsemen and 
dogs, driving the deer round and round till they fall exhausted in the web. The 
affrighted animals struggle and kick, their tongues hang from their foaming 
mouths, while the ladies chatter and laugh at what they call the “jolly sport.” 
Out come the park labourers from their hiding place, and the poor stag feels the 
clutch of brawny arms. Then the saw's begin their work. The splendid antlers 
are sawn away', and the stag emerges from the nets to be driven into the cage, 
foaming and dead-beat, with little knobs where formerly the horns were, bleeding. 
When enough deer have been secured, off goes the van to Swinley Paddocks, 
the workmen return home beer laden, and the sporting papers announce that “a 
very prosperous season with Her Majesty’s is anticipated.” All this is done in a 
Christian country in the name of sport, and will happen again during the coming 
season. 
Such is the description of catching the deer ; equally heart- 
rending is the scene that follows later on. The incidents are 
summed up in this forcible appeal : — 
When the tame deer, hauled from the cart, fawns upon its w’ould-be pur- 
suers and has to be goaded even to a gentle trot, when it takes refuge in a private 
house by leaping through a sheet of glass at the peril of its life — when in its 
efforts to escape the teeth of the hounds it is disembowelled on a fence of barbed 
wire, and when its lacerated body has to be dragged by the huntsman from the 
fury of the pack — in these circumstances, and in the other horrors which every 
reader of The Star knows to follow in the wake of the tame deer hunt, fine ladies 
and gentlemen may close their eyes to the facts, or, like the cowards that some of 
them must be, enjoy the “ sport.” But if you recognise that sickening barbarities, 
savage and inhuman cruelties, are inflicted upon the mild, piteous, graceful 
animals, and recognising this, still continue the hunt “ during one season more,” 
