3-028-621 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Game-Cart: the Last Day, 1870. 'There is the long colloquy with the gamekeeper over night, and the planning of the campaign, the selecting and placing of the beaters; the work of the bustling, short-legged, blear-eyed Clumbers as they quest every bush and bit of sag; the cheery tally-ho if a fox crosses the riding; the halt to an alfresco lunch by the best-furnished of commissariat spring-carts...and the final gathering up and counting of the game. Of course, there are sometimes accidents to mar it. Gentlemen receive occasionally full discharges in spots which are not mortal, and return home to have the shots extracted by the surgeon...In the Gordon riots, the soldiers said that they did not fear the mob if the gentlemen volunteers would not hold their weapons in such a dangerous manner, and the keepers are sometimes led into the same train of reflection. It is shooting and hunting which bind the country gentlemen to their country seats...If they would enjoy them to the full they have merely to remember that they have no right to make their woods one great harbour for ground game to eat up their tenants' crops; and that of all keepers' statements a falser was never invented than that foxes and pheasants cannot live together'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.