local circumstance knows the hounds, so to say, personally, who is constantly at the kennels, will take an interest in the working of the pack and in the doings of individual hounds; but it is the riding and not the hunting which is now the main attraction of the chase, and those who say otherwise are merely promulgating a curious sporting fiction. It may be admitted that some who are in the habit of hunting, and who also ride well to hounds, from constant observation obtain some knowledge of the huntsman's craft, can criticise a cast, and to some extent appreciate the working of hounds. But this is altogether a secondary, and as it were incidental, part of the pastime. There are again a considerable proportion of every field who are attracted to the chase neither by the riding nor the hunting.

'There are those who, like the good "Spectator," make no account of glory, who, if they successfully negotiate an accommodating sheephurdle, are inclined with Dogberry "to give God thanks and make no "boast of it," and if hounds will run away from them follow the advice of the same sagacious philosopher and "let them go." Such men hunt for the sake of the exercise, the fresh air, the pleasure of meeting their friends, the diversion from the routine of everyday life. Often enough they are good sportsmen; and, if they seldom see a fox handsomely killed, enjoy as much as anyone to see him handsomely found. Honest, reputable, and blameless members of the great community of fox-hunters, enjoying themselves without any pretence or parade, jealous of no man's glory, interfering with no man's sport, they are entitled at least to our hearty respect if not to our admiration.'

To this not unjust description of a well-known class of foxhunters, which we extract from the work of the Duke of Beaufort and Mr. Morris, it may be added that in many instances these men are veteran sportsmen whom age or bodily infirmity prevents from pushing to the fore as in bygone days. They are and should be welcome at every meet; they are judicious and kindly sportsmen. But they are entirely different from the other portion of the non-riding division-the Tartarins of the hunting-field, who make a parade and a show and yet are always in the rear, who do not hunt from any true love of the sport-who, to repeat what was once said of a well-known personage, are 6 the 'horsiest of men on foot and the footiest on a horse,' who boast of their prowess in and out of season, and abuse a farmer for closing his gates, yet dare not jump over his fences. These whom we have mentioned are undoubtedly the plague of hunting. Like many ills on earth, they must be accepted as inevitable evils, though every opportunity should be taken to make them understand their

real value. But the detachment of these two classes from the riding division does not add to the strength of those who come for the sake of the hunting properly so called -to watch the working of the hounds and to see them kill their fox-and does not in any way alter the main feature of modern hunting-viz. that the object of those who may be regarded as the choicest spirits of the field is riding. The recognition of this cardinal fact explains the change which has come over fox-hunting in many parts and is in process of creating it in others. It also at once dispels a ridiculous fallacy in which it is the custom of some good people to indulge, that hunting the fox is sport and hunting the carted deer is not sport. The authors of the work on Hunting, in the 'Badminton Library,' show so little knowledge of deer-hunting as to speak of it as 'such imitation of hunting as the pursuit of the paddock-fed deer 'provides.' This assumption is, in the interests of sport, worth examining with some little minuteness, for there may be sporting cant as well as religious or moral cant. Sport is simply synonymous with pastime, and a good sports'man' is one who enters into his pastime with enthusiasm and manliness and sagacity. A man who jumps a big fence into a field of wheat, when his point may be gained equally effectually by going through a gate and not touching the grain crop, may be a man of courage but hardly a good sportsman. The man who goes out with a pack of staghounds may, from this point of view, therefore, be as good a sportsman as one who hunts with foxhounds. Let us see by comparison the difference between the real sport and the so-called imitation. The fox is hunted to be killed, and the deer to be housed; but we take it that the Leicestershire or Cheshire sportsman does not regard the death of the animal as the criterion of sport. Both animals also are preserved for the chase. If within a given radius an existing pack or packs of foxhounds were to be put down, in a short time every fox in the district would disappear, and the covers would be grubbed up or turned into game preserves. Thus the sporting fiction that the fox-hunter is pursuing a wild animal, in the sense that a subaltern in the Himalayas goes out on a tiger-shooting expedition, does not alter the actual fact. Then the fox is disturbed from a covert which is carefully preserved for his habitation; the stag is brought from his paddock in a cart and turned out into a field. No one for a moment can deny that the finding of the fox adds to the pleasures of fox-hunting-there is a picturesqueness, an

uncertainty, and an expectation about it which are altogether wanting when the deer jumps out of his cart, and gallops away in his leisurely fashion. The fox runs in fear of his life; the deer, with fifteen or twenty minutes' start of the hounds, pursues the even tenor of his way across pastures and over hedge and brook, till, finding himself fatigued, he turns to bay. The hounds are whipped off, the deftly handled cord soon secures the quarry, and the day's hunting is over. Let us see the character of the actual pursuit, and endeavour to discover the difference in the sport which some are acute enough to perceive. The deer gives the field a long run. Often Lord Rothschild's hounds run a deer for a couple of hours over the wide pastures, the doubles, and the brooks of the Vale of Aylesbury. In a run of this length or of shorter duration there would be various features. Perhaps the first twenty minutes is a rapid burst:—

'Hard on his track o'er the open, and facing

The cream of the country, the pick of the chase,
Mute as a dream, his pursuers are racing-
Silence, you know, 's the criterion of pace.

Swarming and driving, while man and horse striving,

By hugging and cramming scarce live with him still,
The fastest are failing, the truest are tailing,
The lord of the valley is over the hill.'

It would be difficult from the point of view of the modern hunter to find anything which can be more truthfully called sport than the kind of run thus chronicled in Whyte-Melville's spirited lines. But then it is likely there comes a bit of slow hunting, unless the scent is unusually good, and those who desire to see hounds work out the line have an opportunity of so doing. Then comes another burst, trying the speed, the stamina, and the jumping power of horses, and the nerve and strength of riders :—

'Yonder a steed is rolled up with his master,
Here in a double another lies cast;
Faster and faster come grief and disaster,
All but the good ones are weeded at last.
Hunters so limber at water and timber
Now on the causeway are fain to be led.
Beat, but still going, a countryman sowing

Has sighted the lord of the valley ahead.'

How does this fair run with staghounds differ from a good day with the Quorn or the Cottesmore? There is the difference in the finding of the fox, perhaps even a cover is drawn blank; and then there is a twenty minutes' burst, with a kill

VOL. CLXVI. NO. CCCXL.

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in the open. A trot of some miles to another cover follows, another draw, a fast gallop of thirty minutes, a slow bit of hunting, with a cold scent for ten or fifteen minutes more, and the fox is lost. So that if the two kinds of hunting be analysed, the pursuit of the fox will be found as a rule more varied and more uncertain, and, so to say, more fragmentary in its character than the deer-hunt; but in all the essentials of sport there is no appreciable difference.

We have entered into this question of the rationale of stag-hunting not only because it is well that there should be sincerity in sport as in all other matters, but also because it is assuming greater importance at the present time. This is more especially the case when we come to look at harehunting.

It is unquestionable that since the passing of the Ground Game Act 1880, hares have gradually become scarcer, with the result that harriers have now great difficulty in showing sport at all. It is the same in the North and in the South of England. It necessarily follows that in order to find a hare the pack has to draw a much larger space of ground than was formerly needful. At the best of times farmers dislike fields being ridden over when hounds are not running, but during a period of agricultural depression this dislike becomes more accentuated, and the scarcity of hares has necessarily increased a part of the day's proceedings which every considerate master would like to shorten. Every sportsman knows how a hare will, in its circles, when pursued, run over the same ground; it is therefore hardly possible for the field to help doing more mischief than in fox-hunting; then farmers have never regarded hare-hunting with that cordiality with which they have looked on foxhunting, but the agricultural depression and the absence of hares have naturally increased this dislike. Thus, even should a close time for hares again increase their numbers, there are obvious reasons why the occupiers of land will look somewhat coldly on packs of harriers. The latter not unfrequently, towards the end of the season, are in the habit of hunting deer; this practice is being gradually extended, and the force of circumstances is likely to cause the transformation of many packs of harriers into staghounds. The secretary of a well-known pack of harriers has described to us the difficulty experienced in finding hares, the unwillingness of farmers to permit hare-hunting, and their perfect readiness to allow a deer to be hunted on their farms. Those who regard deer-hunting as a bastard kind of sport may regret

this inevitable change, but whether they regret it or not it is one which is approaching in many places. At any time hare-hunting with harriers is, in our opinion, only desirable when the pack is essentially a private one, with but a very small field, and the hunting ground is the property of the master or is occupied by those who hunt with the pack. On downs and unenclosed land there is not, of course, the same necessity for this privacy. Thus, the part of the South Downs where the Eastbourne Harriers, for example, hunt, can suffer no injury, and much the same may be said of some of the country where the Somerset and Devonshire packs hunt. Beagling is, of course, open to less objection than hunting with harriers, and is a manly and invigorating amusement. But, as the authors of the volume of the Badminton Library on Hunting observe, running after beagles is no child's play: 'to accomplish this a man must be blessed with a good pair of legs, good wind, and above all he must have that determination to be with them which the genuine love of the sight of a 'pack of hounds in full cry will alone give him.' It is obvious, therefore, that beagling appeals altogether to a different class from the fox-hunters and hare-hunters with harriers the one is an amusement with and the other without horses, and therefore beagles can never take the place of harriers. In addition, the scarcity of hares is as much a calamity for beagles as for harriers.

:

The extent of the change in the character of the sport, either by the substitution of staghounds for harriers, or by the extinction of harriers, if a combination of circumstances were to bring this about, can at first scarcely be realised. For the number of packs of harriers in England and Wales is, according to the table in the Badminton Library, which for our present purpose is sufficiently accurate, one hundred and four. It is obvious that many of these cannot be transformed into packs of foxhounds, because they hunt in counties already occupied by this class of hounds. It is equally certain that an established pack of harriers will not be allowed to disappear without an effort by the local sportsmen to preserve them in some form. If hares are so scarce as to be practically useless for the chase, and if farmers are hostile from the causes we have already mentioned, it is obvious that the only way of preserving the sport of a district, which has hitherto been given by harriers, is to change them into staghounds. Anyone who will carefully consider the increasing difficulties of hunting with