There may perhaps have been vegetarians in all ages, but they are certainly rare among the lower races of the present day, and have probably always been so of necessity rather than by choice, for doubtless man is by nature a hunter, and has ever been engaged in trapping and slaying for food the wild animals by which he has been surrounded.

The very earliest men of whom we have any record - whose weapons were of rough stone, and whose dwellings were in caves and rock shelters, who probably built no houses, and, as far as we know, wore no clothes except the skins of the animals they had slain and devoured - were hunters. Noble game, too, they hunted in those days in Europe, such as can now only be found in the wilds of Africa, and some not even there, for they have perished utterly. There were the cave lion and the cave bear, the great sabre-toothed tiger, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and the great mammoth, with its long, curved tusks and shaggy coat, known to us only by its skeleton, and by its likeness - drawn by these savage hunters on a piece of its own tusk - until some years ago a great thaw in Siberia revealed the animal in its flesh, where it had lain packed in ice by the hand of nature for many centuries, yet still remaining fresh enough to be devoured by dogs, a fact which might have suggested the use of the refrigerating process to the wise men of that day; but they were so slow in following where nature led, that it has taken half a century to bring frozen meat into the European market. Then there was the reindeer, useful then as now, and abounding at that time in the south of France, instead of in the Arctic regions; but in those remote ages the south of France was itself Arctic in climate.

The wild cave men of those days have also left us portraits of the reindeer, and of a little shaggy pony, which they ate also, as well as fish and fowl, for people then were not particular as to the choice of food, and ate whatever they could catch, literally by hook or by crook, for, as they had no guns and no weapons of metal, they had to trust to their own skill and cunning rather than to their weapons for their game, and it seems astonishing that with such imperfect implements they should have succeeded in slaughtering such a huge beast as the mammoth; nevertheless, some even now can trap and destroy the elephant and other big game, using for the purpose poisoned arrows and having ingenious methods, whereby the flow of blood from the wound is increased, and, in some cases, the head of the arrow is made to detach itself and the shaft to drag along the ground, entangling itself in the long grass so as to hinder the flight of the wounded animal. Mr. Stanley has described the skill of the little African pigmies in destroying big game with their tiny but beautifully made weapons, and by traps.

European game has now dwindled down to small proportions. The mammoth, and other great beasts its contemporaries, are quite extinct; the reindeer has retreated to the Arctic circles; the horse and the ox, the goat and the pig, are no longer game, but domestic animals. There are still a few bears, wolves, and wild boars to be found, and several kinds of deer. The fox - at least in England - can hardly be looked upon as a wild animal, being carefully preserved; and even of birds, few are now found in the wild state, partridges and pheasants being reared by thousands in poultry yards and turned out to be shot. But in the north, grouse of several kind, blackcock, and capercailzies are still to be found, and wild duck, woodcock, and snipe may fall to the sportsman's gun in the lowlands.

There is, however, little excitement in the pursuit of that which is harmless, and so our genuine sportsmen go further afield for their game, and delight, like Nimrod of old, in hunting the tiger and the wild boar in India, or the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the panther, and various species of deer and antelope in Africa. The latter continent still maintains the pre-eminence which caused it to be named 'the hunter's paradise,' and those who saw the great trophy of heads and horns displayed in the Cape Court at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition must have been struck with the vast variety of game there represented; and more especially they must have wondered at the number of species of antelopes, from the great eland * to the tiny little steinbok. The pursuit of these requires great skill and cunning, for they are all extremely agile, and easily scared, and frequent for the most part mountainous regions, very difficult of access.

* It has been proposed to make an attempt to acclimatise this giant antelope in England and to use it for food, which might, perhaps, be possible.

One antelope only remains in a wild state in Europe - namely, the chamois; and the hunting of this active little animal - which most nearly resembles the klip-springer of the Cape - is attended with a considerable amount of danger.

Those who would realise the pleasures and dangers of chamois hunting, must visit their haunts among the wild peaks of the Tyrolean Alps, and read the tales written by the Baroness Tautphoeus - 'The Initials' and 'Quits' - old now, but wonderfully true in their descriptions of the country and the people, and of that wild chamois hunter and his habits who has been thus described: - 'The true chamois hunter is a man apart. Gaunt and bony, with "brown and sinewy knees, scarred and scratched, hair shaggy, dark piercing eyes, marked eyebrows, a bent eagle nose, and high, fleshless cheek-bones, with a hungry expression on his face," to borrow the words of a famous Alpine hunter, the "Gamsjager" is of a build not to be acquired among the dwellers of cities.'

Once only have I tasted chamois flesh, and can testify to its extreme delicacy and excellence, but it rarely falls to the lot of modern tourists to taste the real article; the Swiss serve up goat flesh cunningly prepared to resemble chamois, but which is no more to be compared with it than is mutton to venison.