2 72 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



mercial transaction. The wealthiest and the most 

 aristocratic landowners send their game to market 

 like ordinary merchandise, and the words " Game 

 sold here " might be truthfully inscribed on an 

 advertisement board in the majority of large estates, 

 both in England and Scotland. I am not quarrelling 

 with the custom, for I fail to understand why a 

 landowner should be expected to give away his 

 surplus game any more than he should be expected 

 to give away his surplus wheat or surplus livestock. 

 Commercially, game is now livestock in the same 

 sense as oxen or sheep. We read in our daily 

 papers the market quotations for game together with 

 those for beef and mutton. Therefore, in any 

 dispute which may arise between game preservers 

 and hunting men, we are forced to form our 

 judgment upon a commercial basis, and ignore the 

 sporting sentiment that 



" One fox on foot more diversion will bring 

 Than twice twenty thousand cock pheasants on wing." 



Nor will I reiterate the arguments which tend to 

 prove that fox-hunting is the strongest bulwark of 

 English agriculture. The gamekeeper declares that 

 the fox is an arrant pheasant poacher, and accounts 

 for the scarcity of game by the plenitude of foxes. 

 If his statement be true, then we can only suppose 

 that the live foxes occasionally for sale in Leaden- 

 hall Market have been educated to carry pheasants 

 to the London poulterers. 



