230 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



utilised by a man intent only on stagbunting — and tbe same may 

 be said of Exford, which offers the further inducement of the 

 kennels, neat and pretty as can be seen in England. 



In the local mind staghunting is as much a portion of an 

 acknowledged creed as the solemnisation of matrimony, or a 

 belief in the merits of cider. Men are brought up to cherish and 

 revere it : to regard it is a solemn institution — their country's 

 by right of being nature's chosen ground, theirs by a happy 

 accident of birth, which appointed them to so honourable a 

 trust. They speak of it no less earnestly than of the national 

 policy — with the difference, that this earnestness is ever applied 

 in heartfelt support, and no voice is raised to cast a doubt, or to 

 suggest another side to the question. The stag robs no hen- 

 roost ; and interferes with no game-bird's nest — save when now 

 and again his lordly step falls by chance on the greyhen seated 

 beneath the heather. But in his own way he makes his pre- 

 sence felt — not always harmlessly. Yet his living is never 

 grudged : his right to the produce of the soil is never questioned. 

 Not a farmer, or a labourer, within the wide radius where the 

 staghounds are seen, but welcomes his broad slot in the turnip 

 field, is proud to think that a warrantable stag has been 

 harboured thence, and that the combe above the homestead 

 will give out royal sport this morning. Every passer-by on the 

 road — yeoman or working-man, country townsman or more rustic 

 shepherd — enquires of the returning sportsman " Did you kill 

 the stag to-day ? " ; and the news of last spring, that the pack 

 were fallen victims of a destroying malady, came like a dire 

 calamity on Devon and Somerset. Few packs of foxhounds can 

 find their game as readily, and certainly, as these staghounds — 

 whether on Exmoor proper or elsewhere in their wide, and 

 heartily-disposed, territory. A vulpecide is everywhere looked 

 upon as a selfish sneak — be he the village poacher, or the lord 

 who with estates in one country takes his pleasure in another, 

 or muffles himself sullenly in his cloak of egotism at home. 

 But the man who lifts his hand, in person or proxy, against a 

 stag in the West is branded at once as a pariah, a leper whose 



