Old Sports and Sportsmen; or, the Willey Country

Old Sports and Sportsmen; or, the Willey Country - with sketches of Squire Forester and his whipper-in Tom Moody

A simple reading of the history of the earth is sufficient to show that hunting is as old as the hillsnot figuratively, but literally; and that the hunter and the hunted, one furnished with weapons of attack, and the other with means of defence, have existed from the earliest periods of creation to the present. That is, the strong have mastered the weak, and in some instances have fallen side by side, as we see by their remains. In the economy of p. 2Nature, the process of decay appears to have been the exception, rather than the rule; with beak or tooth, or deadly claw, the strong having struck down the less defended in a never-ending arena. What a hunting field, in one sense, the Old World must have been, when creatures of strange and undefined natures infested the uncertain limits of the elements, and what encounters must have taken place in the ooze and mud periods, when monsters, enormous in stature and stretch of wing, were the implacable hunters of the air, the water, and the slime! Nor can the inhabitants of the earth, the water, and the air, taking the term in its broad rather than in its technical sense, be said to be less hunters now, or less equipped with deadly weapons. Some have supernumerary teeth to supply the loss of such as might get broken in the fray. One strikes down its prey at a blow, another impales its victims on thorns, and a third slays by poison. Some hunt in company, from what would seem to be a very love of sportas crows and smaller birds give chase to the owl, apparently rejoicing in his embarrassment, at break of day. We need but refer to those remotely removed stages of human life illustrated by drift beds, bone p. 3caves, and shell heapsto those primitive weapons which distinguished the lowest level of the Stone Age, weapons which every year are being brought to light by thousandsto give the genus homo a place among the hunters; indeed one of the strongest incentives which helped on Pre-historic Man from one level to the other through the long night of the darkest ages, appears to have been that which such a pursuit supplied. To obtain the skins of animals wilder than himself he entered upon a scramble with the wolf, the bear, and the hyena. Driven by instinct or necessity to supply wants the whole creation felt, his utmost ingenuity was put forth in the chase; and in process of time we find him having recourse to the inventive arts to enable him to carry out his designs. On the borders of lakes or on river banks, in caverns deep-seated amid primeval forest solitudes, he fashioned harpoons and arrow-heads of shell, horn, or bone, with which to repulse the attack of prowlers around his retreat and to arrest the flight of the swiftest beast he required for food; and when he emerged from the dark night which Science has as yet but partially penetrated, when he had succeeded in pressing the horse and the dog into his service, and when the p. 4cultivation of the soil even had removed him above the claims of hunger, he appears equally to have indulged the passionprobably for the gratification it gave and the advantages it brought in promoting that tide of full health from which is derived the pleasing consciousness of existence. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 63805
Author: Randall, John
Release Date: Nov 18, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English