THE NEW FOREST IN SPRING. 



FOX-HUNTING. 



For pleasant springhunting amid charming surroundings 

 give me the New Forest. " I speak of things as I found them," 

 and base my impressions on this hypothesis. 



If you don't fish and you don't race ; if you care for hunting 

 for its own sake, and dislike idleness for its consequences, what 

 are you to do during the latter weeks of April ? The New Forest 

 answers the question. You may there hunt six days a week, with 

 a very moderate outfit of horses ; you may see hounds run hard 

 with fox and deer, and you spend your days amid forest scenery, 

 that is none the less beautiful, none the less appreciable, because 

 her Most Gracious Majesty is good enough to keep the roads 

 perfect, and the turf ridings firm and safe for the use of her 

 grateful subjects, of both high and of low degree. How King 

 Rufus managed his hunting — even afoot — it is hard to imagine. 

 But for Her Majesty's care and expenditure the loyal citizen — 

 for whom the Forest now exists, free for all, no matter whence 

 he comes, or whether to gather flowers, to picnic, or to sport with 

 hounds — would find it difficult to wander far into some of the 

 more picturesque depths of the forest, but would have to pull 

 up, again and again, for stream and swamp. Hundreds of 

 bridges, often primitive but always effectual, have been built ; 

 many hundreds of bogs have been rendered passable by 

 means of faggot and gravel ; and the National Park of Old Eng- 

 land is thus thrown open and made practicable for all who 

 would wander through — on wheels in many directions, on foot 

 as far as such method of exercise is likely to prompt, and on 



