INTRODUCTION vii 



Drill Book dealing with every phase and aspect 

 of the Chase. 



His chief claim upon posterity is that he is 

 the only author who has reduced a cast to the 

 form of a diagram. This diagram is quite as 

 convincing, and a deal more simple than many 

 propositions of Euclid, and one almost wonders 

 why Mr. Smith did not write Q.E.D., or better 

 still Q.E.F., at the foot of his argument. Many 

 Foxes have been killed either by the deliberate 

 or accidental application of Mr. Smith's patent 

 cast, and many Foxes have been lost through 

 disregarding it. Every Huntsman should have 

 the idea of it in his mind. It is not recondite or 

 mysterious. Many people seem to think that 

 the successful hunting of wild animals partakes of 

 the supernatural, and that to recover the line of 

 a Fox after the Hounds have lost the scent is a 

 kind of sleight of hand. This is not so. The art 

 of Hunting the Fox is founded upon the successful 

 application of Commonsense. And in no docu- 

 ment upon Foxhunting does the application of 

 Commonsense appear more vividly than in Mr. 

 Smith's analysis of a cast. His thesis amounts to 

 nothing more than a recognition of simple fact. 

 When hounds have been running on fairly good 

 terms with their Fox and throw up their heads, 

 the Fox has either made a sharp turn and caused 



