Then it is perceived that no sort of logical justification exists for the enormous difference made in brokerage between one class of goods and another, and between one client and another. For example, bonds are bought and sold on a commission of 1
16 per cent., mining shares on varying scales which work out at an average of ¾ per cent., which is enough to kill the finest business in the world. This excessive charge is not defended; but it is explained. When mining shares were first introduced, the public were very shy of them—and the House, too, for that matter—and promoting firms were ready to pay liberal commissions in order to get them placed, an operation often attended with difficulty and risk. Thus there came to be established a standard of expectation, the public paying whatever charge the broker chose to exact, and the mining market became the happy hunting-ground of new recruits by the thousand, who perceived in it the opportunity of quickly getting rich. Short cuts of this kind, however, generally prove the long way round in the end. Brokers as a class cannot thrive by bleeding their clients white by excessive commissions and contangoes. Either they make losses, which wipe out their gains, and more, or they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. They cannot acquit themselves altogether of some share in the collapse by which speculation of this character has been overtaken. Commonsense and competition point with unerring finger the direction of amendment and reform, and I expect to see established at no distant date an almost universal charge of ¼ per cent. upon the money, whether shares are bought or sold, or ½ per cent. if commission be charged on sales alone. Pending this concession, it is not probable that speculation will revive upon any considerable scale in the market which has been in the past the most attractive of all markets, and may be again if things are well and wisely handled. The loss of it would not be compensated for by rubber trash and cab companies, over which there will be some burning of fingers before long. “Trash,” did I say? Well, of course, that is much too sweeping a generalisation. As a fact, the great majority of the rubber concerns are moderately capitalised, and the demand for their product is going up with such leaps and bounds that they can only be regarded as sound and stable concerns. That, however, is where the trouble comes in. On the back of every successful form of enterprise kindred ventures are too often floated without much regard to the question whether they contain the elements of success or not. Like the razors that were made to sell, and not to shave, these undertakings are launched for the sake of the promotion, and for no other reason apparent to the wit of man. Promotion in the miscellaneous market has seldom much behind it. The shares once placed, those who are in may whistle for the day they will get out. There is but one fitting inscription for that section, regarded as a whole—“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Mining descriptions, with all their drawbacks and all their dangers, have as a rule at least the inestimable advantage of a “shop.” Mining promotions, I am given to understand, are likely to be almost nominal in the coming year; but there are miscellaneous things enough to stagger humanity awaiting a favourable moment to be launched.
G. P. F.
Half a Century’s Hunting Recollections.
IV.
The mention of red deer reminds me of roe. As all the sporting world knows, Mr. Seymour Dubourg, before he took the South Berks country, was master of the Ripley and Knaphill Harriers. With these, at the end of the season, he used to hunt an occasional carted stag, but more frequently the wild roe deer, which were at that time to be found (they were never plentiful) between Windlesham, Bagshot, and Easthampstead, also in the heath and pinewood country south-west of the River Blackwater. It was a most interesting sport, and none the less attractive as coming at a time when foxhunting is practically over. The hounds were small foxhound bitches, I should say rather under than over twenty inches. With so accomplished a huntsman as Mr. Dubourg, I make no doubt that they did their work, as harriers, as it ought to the done. However that may be, they were the best pack of staghounds I ever saw. They went the pace, and were not big enough to kill a deer, bar accidents. With roe they drove like furies, but, I suppose from their harrier training, hardly ever over-ran it.
It is the manner of a roe, when first found, to make a point of 2 or 3 miles; then he returns almost to the starting place, or anyhow to its neighbourhood, and begins “making work.” In the straight part of his flight he is seldom far in front of hounds. But having begun his dodges, if he gets half a chance he will steal away, and, as likely at not, run the pack out of scent. His resources are legion. He can squat like a hare, swim like a fish, meuse through a fence like a rabbit, and jump over any ordinary park palings. He is most difficult to view, as he will crawl up a ditch or drain, and utilises every depression in the ground, and of course every bit of covert. He has the cunning of fox and hare combined, but not very much more stoutness than the last named. In France, roe-hunting packs are not uncommon, and a friend of my own has one in Belgium, which, however, hunts hare as well. And a French friend of mine once asked me to stay with him for roe-hunting, promising to mount me, and doubtless I should have had a most enjoyable visit, but I preferred to stay at Melton. By the way, this gentleman valued Belvoir blood above all else.
The objections to the roe as a beast of chase may be gathered from the above. It is pretty hunting, but almost all in covert. The advantages are that you can hunt him all through the winter as you do the fox, and also that you can draw for him without any bother of “tufting,” as you never find more than a brace, or at most three together. When the latter is the case, it is a family party—buck, doe, and kid. The latter would stand but a poor chance were it not for its squatting, when the hounds dash away and settle to the moving scent. When roe are carefully preserved the woods will be full of them, as the young trees will soon tell you. I know nowhere at present, even in Scotland, where they are too numerous, and in the country I have described I should say that they are all but extinct, although some three years ago I saw a brace when Mr. Garth was drawing St. Leonard’s Forest.
With Mr. Dubourg’s hounds one had to ride up to them, if one wanted the venison. If he happens to read this, he will doubtless remember what happened once near Black Bushes Farm. Hounds had been running some time, and we thought “catching time” could not be far off. They came to (for that country at least) a very small wood. We each took one side of the covert (only the master and writer being there), but to our surprise saw no hounds away. To dive into the wood was, for Mr. Dubourg, “the work of an instant.” Arrived at his pack, he found that in those very few minutes they had not only killed the buck but (not bad judges!) had eaten the haunches, &c., and left only the head, neck, and forequarters. Unlike our other deer, the roe is at his best as venison, from the middle or end of October to the end of the hunting season. He sheds his horns late in the autumn. Roe venison has an undeservedly bad name, as lessees of Highland shootings often kill them in the grouse season.
As July and August are the months in which most of them pair, August for choice, côtelette de chevreuil is best avoided until after the stalking season. By the way, the “stags” mentioned in the late Colonel Anstruther Thomson’s most interesting book were roe. My kind old friend wrote to me shortly before his death, to explain that his South Country hunt servants would call them stags, hence he got in the way of it. Of course, no red deer have been wild in Fife since almost prehistoric times. But some folks never can learn the proper names of deer. Once, in forest-hunting with our late Queen’s hounds, I saw an “instructor” from Sandhurst, who told me that the deer had just passed him, and that it was a fallow deer! “Are you sure of that?” said I (I never yet saw one there, unless he had been put there). “Oh, yes, it had no horns!” was the startling reply.
A short time ago there was a discussion in the Field as to whether the progeny of hounds hunting deer, or hares, should be elegible for the Foxhound Stud book. I think it was decided against them, the theory being that staghounds do not carry a head. Now this is merely a question of their quarry. After a few days roehunting, Mr. Dubourg, (by invitation), uncarted a stag near Bracknell. Comins, at that time the Royal huntsman (or acting huntsman?), had been roehunting, and we both remarked the head these hounds carried then. We had a good run and took our stag safely, but from the moment the hounds were laid on, they went stringing along (I do not mean “tailing,” a very different thing) “just exactly like my hounds,” as Comins said to me. I saw the Queen’s hounds once run a cub in Swinley Forest, on a steaming, warm, wet October morning, and as they crossed a ride, close to the said cub, which was dead beat, they carried a head that neither Belvoir, Quorn, nor Pytchley, could have beaten. They were stopped just in time to save young Reynard. It was in October, as aforesaid, by which time a cub should be pretty well able to take his own part. Strange blunders have found their way into sporting history and been accepted as facts merely for want of contradiction, e.g., how often have we read that, in the spring, Mr. Meynell entered his young hounds to hare, for want of woodlands.