SPORT OR SLAUGHTER?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 224, 8 September 1862, Page 6

SPORT OR SLAUGHTER?

The Saturday Review thus comments on the 'above, under the heading of " Sport or Slaughter." "The feeling Avith which we lay before our readers this chronicle of. Lord Londesborough's 'doings in Egypt' is by no means akin to the pleasure entertained by the Field. Disgust and indignation is rather the sentiment which we entertain, and which Aye believe will also be felt by the sportsmen Avho are readers of our contemporary—disgust and indignation, not only as regards . the flunkeyism which chronicles the 'cost of the equipment,' which is so expensive, and which is ' only within the reach of wealthy men like the noble lord,'but disgust and indignation at the scandalous poulterer's bill which the noble lord or his valet has sent to the Fiell. Lord Londesborough is the son of one who wa3 known as an art collector of some taste, and Aye wish'that the son had followed in his father's path. Possibly he is an accomplished archaeologist. He may be skilled, like Moses, in all the learning of Egypt, and he may be bringing home sculptures, mummies, and papyri. He may be about to enrich the department of antiquities at the British Museum; but he certainly Avill do nothing to illustrate its ornithology. If he has only gone to the Nile as a variety" to the excitement of a battue, we can but regret, in the interests alike of humanity, decency, and science, that he did riot confine himself to the common-place butchery of a Norfolk pheasant-shooting. There is no sport Avhatever in slaughtering the poor harmless birds of the Upper Nile, while there is something inexpressibly ludicrous and humiliating in the fact that a great English lord,at vast expense, is at the trouble of being towed along that sacred river, and through the heart of that mighty land of mystery and ancient civil izition, for the dignified % purpose of furnishing the readers ot the Field Avith the important;fact that it took his lordship two months to murder 1,514 of those geese which a fellow-feeling might have '"prompted him to spare. To ruu up 500 miles of the Nile for the high and sacred object of popping successfully at 3,283 pigeons, Avhich might have shown as good sport at Hornsey Wood, is a feat which reflects small credit on the British nobility. Lord Londesborough has done something positively detrimental to" science and to society. Besides a brutal and Avholesate butchery of wild game, he has done wrong to the world beyond Egypt. '112 herons and storks, we trust, is a mistake. On

the Nile the poor herons, utterly useless for food, share, "the .fish of that abounding stream with the crocodiles ; and as to the storks, they are the pride and delight of the people living on the banks of that classic river. They build on the house-tops, walk tame and fearless through the alluvial fields, destroy noxious vermin, and are regarded by the peasants in the same familiar and domestic aspect as the British robin among ourselves. Besides all this, they are the very birds | whiA spend the summer in Holland and Spain; and if in the cities of Europe we miss our sacred and migratory storks, we shall have to thank the j British sportsman on the Nile, shoull it ever become a fool's passion among idle young men to follow Lord Londesborough's example. As to j the forty-seven flamingoes, words are too faint jto express the outrage upon every feeling Avhich is caussed by the shameless and wanton massacre of a bird of singular grace and beauty, and to which the Nile scenery owes so much, ; and which even in Upper |Egypt is by no means common.