12 HUNTING 



and gives three hundred guineas for a hunter, but for 

 the man who keeps his two or three horses, and wishes 

 that both horses and stables should be as near perfec- 

 tion as is compatible with a moderate income. It may 

 appear to some that we have descended to trivial 

 details by giving lists and prices of stabling and groom- 

 ing utensils with hints as to how long they should last, 

 and by stating the proper allowance of hay and corn 

 per diem for a hunter. But it is in regard to these 

 details that a man, when he first begins to hunt, is 

 entirely at the mercy of his groom. Nothing in or 

 about a stable is so trivial as to be beneath the notice 

 of the master. A careless master makes a careless 

 man, and the two together make a dirty untidy stable 

 and ill-conditioned, badly-groomed horses. If these 

 pages help the novice in the slightest degree to learn 

 how to become his own stud-groom, another of our objects 

 will have been attained. 



Our third object is to supply information to the 

 numerous class of people in every country of the globe, 

 who take an interest in the most popular of British 

 sports, to many of whom the rationale of fox-hunting is 

 an enigma, as it is to many of our own cockneys. 

 " You English are all hunting mad," an American said 

 once to us ; but within three months he was as hunting- 

 mad as any Englishman. 



Even in a book, the aim of which is to give practical 

 advice to the tyro, it is necessary to state briefly the 

 history of the sport with which we have to deal. Lord 

 Wilton says, in his " Sports and Pursuits of the English," 

 " about the year 1750 hounds began to be entered 

 solely to fox." But the custom was little practised. 

 In Pye's " Sportsman's Dictionary," 1807 edition, we 

 read : " The fox is taken with greyhounds, terriers, nets, 



