Mr. Selous wrote, ‘As far as my experience goes, I agree with what he says.’
Col. James Baker stated that, after perusing the chapter with his friend Mr. Edward Ross, they both of them fully concurred in the views expressed, and had nothing to alter or to add.—C. P.-W.
CHAPTER XV
HINTS ON TAXIDERMY, ETC
By Clive Phillipps-Wolley
That ‘the reward lies not in the prize but in the race we run’ is probably more true of sport than of any other pursuit, and yet even in big game shooting there are prizes to strive after which serve at any rate to remind the winners of the races they ran to obtain them. To the man who has won them fairly, the mighty antlers and fierce masks which hang in his hall or study are treasures beyond price. As to the men who buy such trophies, they are not of our guild, nor is it easy to comprehend them or their motives.
When the light is waning and the flames from a wood fire cover the walls of a hunter’s den with quaint shadows of the spolia opima of the chase, it is easy to explain to a kindred spirit the value set upon these hardly-earned treasures. To some they may be mere dry bones or hideous mummies; but out of them and their shadows the tired man, dozing by his hearth, can call up pictures from the deep primeval forest, the sheer snow mountains, or sweet and wild wind-swept upland; pictures such as no artist ever painted or poet fancied. Each head is to that dreamer a key to some locker in his memory. He has but to look at those antlers in the firelight, and the past comes back vivid and glorious, aglow with the colours of an Indian summer, or bright with the blossoms of an Alpine spring, mellow with the beauty distance lends, and painted by the strong happy hand of youth.
If age and feebleness come, shall there be no satisfaction to the old hunter in remembering the ibex he outclimbed, the stag whose senses were not keen enough to detect the stealthy approach of those now clumsy feet tottering to their rest; the grim foe, tiger or grizzly, upon whom his worn-out eyes once gazed without blenching, measuring the shot calmly, upon the success of which hung his life or the beast’s?
