Punch (73.1877)

November 10, 1877.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAKIVARI. 205

THE SITE FOR CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE,

To Mr. Punch.

Venerable Punch,

The true site for this great monument has not-
been yet suggested. I suggest it now. I do so
through your columns, of course, as to tlietn the world
looks for final judgment <>n all things under the Sun—
and indeed over it—" mque ad caelum "

Let the obelisk be erected in fVont of the Royal Ex-
change. The associations of the spot leave nothing to
be desired. Threadneedle Street adjoins it. The ad-
jacent Bank of England will recal the banks of the Nile.
Capel Court is in the immediate neighbourhood, and the
dealers in Egyptian Bonds there may daily pass this
great memorial which looked down, so many centuries
back, on Egyptian bonds which their victims found not
less hard to get off their hands. There, too, Moses may
still be found amongst the Bull-rushes, as in the days of
Pharaoh. Nor will the site be without its moral uses; for
revellers going to Lord Mayors' dinners with Aldermanic
appetites may be reminded by it of the Skeleton at the
Feast. The Shade of Champollion.

P.S.—At the same time my own countrymen might
advantageously remove their obelisk of Luxor from
its present inappropriate site to the Place de la Bourse.

GENTLE IRONY.

Impatient Driver. " Now then, Bill ! 'Avin' the old Bus Photer-

GRARFED, hay ? "

NOT QUITE GOOD STYLE.

Me. Punch, Sir,

Lokd Beacoxsfield wrote last week to Mr.
Caird, of Glasgow University, regretting his inability
to take a personal farewell of the students on the ex-
piration of his Lord Rectorship, and requesting him to
"assure them that their original confidence, and, still
more, their repetition of their kind feelings, are among
the happiest and proudest moments of my life." Doesn't
this strike you as bearing a strong resemblance to the
speech of the newly-decorated Moire in a recent Palais
Royal vaudeville ? " Cette croix, Messieurs, est le plus
beau jour de ma vie." Surely, the Premier isn't going
to devote his spare time to adapting from the French ?

Yours,

Nov. 2, 1877. Glasguensis Expectans.

signs oe an early winter.

The leaves of several Christmas Numbers have already
fallen upon the Railway Bookstalls.

IMPALING THE BADGER.

"Why, of all harmless fourlegged things, unearth the poor Bad-
ger in the Times, particularly when, not satisfied with intruding
on.the domestic privacy of the British Bear, with descriptions of how
Mrs. B. makes him wipe his feet before he comes into the parlour,
what hours he affects, the sort of table he keeps, the way he brings
up his family, and so forth—how would that other British Bear,
Paterfamilias, like to be interviewed, and to have that house which
he calls his castle invaded in the same style ?—"Our Own Corre-
spondent'' ends by bringing the poor Badger into the privileged
circle of big game, and coolly asks to be allowed

"To testify to the amount of sport -which these animals are capable of
affording to any one who cares to make a midnight excursion in pursuit of
them."

Adding, to make matters worse, the expression of his conviction
" That they are not nearly bo scarce in England as people generally
suppose."

If not so scarce now, "Our Own Correspondent" in Friday's Times
has done his best to make them even scarcer, by some very uncalled-
for information,

" The badger, as is well known, is in the habit of searching for food during
the night-time, and on these excursions will often wander a long way from
his hole, and it is then that it affords the sportsman (?) the opportunity of
capturing it, which is done by previously 'bagging' its hole, and beating
round the woods, and in that manner alarming the animal, which imme-
diately makes for home. One person is generally stationed a short distance
from the 'earth' with a trustworthy dog, in order to prevent the badger's
escape, for he not unfrequently notices that something is wrong, and, haying
got sight of the bag in his hole, will turn tail, and if you have not a dog with
you, all chance of catching the animal is lost."

All the better for " the animal." Oh, if Punch could only turn
the tables ! The Ursides are among the most human of quadrupeds.

If they could only be human enough to forget all humanity, turn
upon "Our Own Correspondent," and have the hunting of him,
bagging his door, and beating up his haunts, and when he makes for
home, being down upon him with a trustworthy dog. What, Punch
would be glad to know, has the poor Badger dune, that he should be
thus held up to be harried and hunted ? Is it not enough that he
is already but too liable to become the central figure of the " ratting
sports," which are among the pet pleasures of sporting black-
guardism, and as such to be brutally baited with bull-terriers.

It makes Punch's blood boil to think of a harmless, nocturnal,
wood-haunting recluse, who neither kills, nor is, game, being held
up as " capital sport" for capture by trustworthy dogs, hounded on
by bloody-minded and butcherly " Correspondents," who usurp th.-
name of sportsmen. "Sport to you, Gentlemen," the Badger
might say, but death to me."

The last sentence of the letter is but too good an illustration of
the reasonableness of Badger's plea and Punch's protest :—

" "While on a visit to'a friend in Gloucestershire this year, I witnessed the
capture of a fine male badger, which weighed over 201bs., and was a valuable
addition to a collection of stuffed animals."

How "valuable"? Is there anything to be learnt from such
a specimen? Or was the friend a professional taxidermist, who
looked on his twenty pounds weight badger in the light of £. s. d. ?

The writer's unconscious lack of humanity is well brought out by
the sentence in which he informs us that:—

" If captured while young, badgers will become very tame in confinement,
and take food from the hand."

And yet it never occurred to this noble sportsman that this readi-
ness to become domesticated, and to show love for, and confidence in,
man, was a reason for not bringing the Badger within the savagery
of "sport," and handing him over to the fate of so many innocent
and beautiful things now persecuted by sportsmen and gamekeepers
under the broad brand of "vermin."

VOL. Lxxm.

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