Without saying anything one way or another about the ethics
of staghunting as pursued on Exmoor and Ifs -neighbourhood (and the author says nothing on this-point either), one readily admits that Memories of -a Stag-Harbourer (Witherby, 10s. 6d.), by Fred Goss is full of interest for every lover of wild life. The author was for twenty-eight years harbourer to the Devon and Somerset Stag Hounds, and this duty, which involved his being up and about in the grey of the morning to find out where the night-feeding red-deer stag had harboured for the day in wood, brush or bracken, has given his book the priceless quality of exact and- first-hand knowledge of the tall deer from his birth to the end of the run. Mr. Goss is full of woodcraft : he will tell you- how flies- give away a hiding deer, how to read slots and what the expression all his rights " means, along with other antler-lore. He notei how popular is staghunting with everybody round Exmoor, where in the churches on the opening Sunday of the hunting- season they used to sing "As pants the hart for waterbrooks, ' points out how woefully deer will ravage a field of roots or corn, and mentions how in .the years 1833-37, when there was no hunting, the deer were almost exterminated. Besides deer the writer has many good notes on other wild creatures- fox, otter and badger among them ; he records a rare occur- rence of a roe in Devon, and he has seen a weasel swept aloft by a kestrel and kill his captor in mid-air.
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