To my publishers Messrs. Longmans, and particularly to Mr. C. J. Longman,
I am much indebted for the spirit in which they have met me with regard to
this work. Without the expenditure of a very large sum of money it would have
been impossible to produce such a book as this. Mr. C. J. Longman generously
left me entirely unhampered both as to time and monetary considerations, and
any success it may have is largely due to his broad-mindedness.
My especial thanks are due to Mr. T. A. Coward, who has most kindly
overlooked the proofs of this work and called my attention to the certain pitfalls
into which we all tumble. His careful consideration and advice have been of
the greatest help to me in many instances, and to his sound judgment in
scientific matters relating to classification I am much indebted.
As to the illustrations, it was at one time my hope and ambition to do the
whole work myself, but as time went on I found the task too great for one man.
To complete it would delay the publication some six or seven years. I therefore
approached my friend Mr. Archibald Thorburn, who cordially agreed with me that
there ought to be a book on Mammals like Lord Lilford’s ‘ British Birds ’ but
with a complete letterpress, and with rare unselfishness and little monetary gain
to himself he has given me of his best. I can assure the reader that it is not an
easy task to draw most of the British Mammals from life, with suitable backgrounds
which are themselves high-class works of art, and I am greatly indebted
to Mr. Thorburn for the care and trouble he has expended on his part of the
undertaking. Mr. George Lodge too has drawn all the species of British bats
from life or immediately after death, and he has met me with an enthusiasm for
the task which can be felt only by the genuine lover of nature. The carefulness
of his work speaks for itself, and it is only by the expenditure of extreme care
that individual species can be accurately represented.
In the present volume I have endeavoured to look upon the life of our
Mammals from every point of view. Due attention is given to the chase
of every creature where that animal is an object of pursuit, for the best
sportsmen as a rule know as much about the animal they hunt as the man who
sits in a chair and juggles with Latin names, although each writes from only
one point of view.
Sport is the natural safety-valve and strength-giver to this latter-day
existence. Unfortunately it must always be attended by a certain amount of
cruelty, but we can so conduct it that such cruelty as exists is more than compensated
for by the healthy tone that it imparts to the nation. Certainly the
best and kindest men I know are all enthusiastic lovers of the chase.
There is and probably always will be a class in this country who severely
criticise sport, but if it came to be a question of placing these people in
authority I should be sorry to entrust myself to their tender mercies. They
mean well, but to follow their counsels would be to eliminate all that is best
from life and make us a race of cranks and pedants. Personally I have hunted
and slain everything in Britain from a Lesser Shrew to the large whales, and
I am not in the least ashamed of the fact.
Centuries go by and things alter just a little, but after all we do not change
our natures in spite of the veneer of civilisation. The old story of the cave-
dweller with his flint-headed arrows and his primitive scratchings on the reindeer
bone is repeated to-day with the rifle, the hound, and the pencil. Still the reader
must not think that I insist too much on the superior knowledge of the hunter
over the scientific naturalist. The reverse is often the case, for in hunting the
man who follows often sees only one aspect of the life of the beast he chases, and
that not always the most interesting one, while he who keeps animals in
confinement may also play a considerable part in adding to the knowledge of our
wild creatures.
The genuine sportsman must be a bit of a naturalist, for it is not the killing
of an animal that appeals to any but the most gross-minded. The naturalist
absorbed in his pursuit gets the best out of life, for to him there is not one day
or hour in the year that does not unfold some new and wonderful truth. To
him the birds sing more sweetly, the mornings are fairer, and the skies more
blue, than is dreamt of by the dwellers in our towns. Pleasures, these,
that our plutocrats with all their wealth cannot buy. They are given rather to
the simplest dweller on the hillside or in the valley who approaches the works
of God in an humble and inquiring spirit. Here the naturalist finds day by day
an inexhaustible mine of wealth, and as he learns to read the sights and sounds