Deer Lore Is All But Extinct, The Terms Of Venery Known But
To A Few; Few, Indeed, Could Correctly Name The Parts Of A Buck If One
Were Sent Them.
The deer are a picture only - a picture that lives and
moves and is beautiful to look at, but must not be rudely handled.
Still,
they linger while the marten has disappeared, the polecat is practically
gone, and the badger becoming rare. It is curious that the badger has
lived on through sufferance for three centuries. Nearly three centuries
ago, a chronicler observed that the badger would have been rooted out
before his time had it not been for the parks. There was no great store
of badgers then; there is no great store now. Sketches remain in old
country-houses of the chase of the marten; you see the hounds all yelping
round the foot of a tree, the marten up in it, and in the middle of the
hounds the huntsman in top-boots and breeches. You can but smile at it.
To Americans it must forcibly recall the treeing of a 'coon. The deer
need keep no watch, there are no wolves to pull them down; and it is
quite probable that the absence of any danger of that kind is the reason
of their tameness even more than the fact that they are not chased by
man. Nothing comes creeping stealthily through the fern, or hunts them
through the night. They can slumber in peace. There is no larger beast of
prey than a stoat, or a stray cat.
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