Scientific Society
The Wild Animals of England

The lecturer at the Scientific Society’s meeting held at the Guild Hall on Wednesday night, was Mr. E. Phillips, and his subject was the wild animals of England.

Mr. F. O. Kirby president was in the chair, and in the introductory business, specimens of rare plants found in the Doncaster area were submitted by Dr. Corbett.

Mr. Phillips dealt with the wild animals of the fields and woods and the moors, including the fox, the stag, the badger, the otter, and others, and gave a slight sketch of their life and habitats, not as viewed by the naturalist in the study, but by the open-air sportsman.

Dealing with the stag, Mr. Phillips, while not arguing that the practice of hunting tame stags was entirely free from cruelty, thought the charge had been overdone by sentimentalists. Where a stag or a fox or an otter knew it was being hunted to the death there were cases where the creature had been mastered by its fear and sustained injury in its attempt to elude its pursuers, but in tame stag hunting the creatures were so valuable that all care was taken of them, and at the end of the hunt they were carried home again in safety. After a dew such experiences a stag came to realise the situation, and when it had had enough of a spanking run across country it would end the chase by the simple expedient of backing up against a wall and keeping the hounds at bay until they were whipped off by the huntsman.

The cunning of the fox and the remarkable shifts he adopts to throw his pursuers off the track were dealt with, and in this connection the lecturer showed how by the fact of the badger often living in the same earth as the fox he met the end intended for Reynard. Startled by the hounds, the unlucky badger dashed into the open and was killed, but his end was not so tame as that of a fox in similar conditions, and many a fine hound had been savagely mauled by the death grip of a badger.

The life of the otter, the creature’s habits at home and his demeanour when hunted, were shown, and Mr. Phillips, as a practical angler, gave it as his deliberate conviction that the charge against the otter of living on salmon and trout was not proven. He had seen many otters after pike and eels, and it was a fact that in confinement the otter showed a preference for coarse fish over game fish.

The ferret – which Mr. Phillips described as a loveable little beast when you got to know him – the weasel, a charming creature at play on a sunny day, and the stoat, were described, the latter creature being in Mr. Phillip’s opinion the most bloodthirsty creature alive. His ferocity, his lust for slaughter, his cleverness in hunting by scent, and the instinct of preservation which impels him to migrate to fresh quarters when one place becomes too hot for him, were enlarged upon.

Finally, there were a few words about the rat, a creature said to be aa numerous in England as human beings and to account for a million pounds of damage per annum. And a creature which, said the lecturer, had several good points, not the least being the fact that he was the greatest scavenger we had that he cleared away tons of festering refuse.

At the end there was a discussion, and the ethics of sport were touched upon, and the cruelty or otherwise of hunting was debated.

The meeting closed with the election of two new member and the customary vote of thanks.