STAG-HUNTING 65 



an entire absence of cruelty, the tendency, if anything, 

 being to pamper the deer. That the prominent sports- 

 men who have been masters of staghounds during 

 the present century, to say nothing of the thousands 

 of good men who must have followed them, would have 

 calmly sat down and sanctioned the perpetration of 

 cruelty, as the extraordinary band of persons who are 

 agitating for the abolition of the Eoyal Hunt allege, 

 is not for one moment to be imagined, nor would 

 anybody, except people who know nothing about the 

 details of stag-hunting, ever suppose that cruelty has 

 any place in hunting the carted deer. 



Let us now state briefly the difference between fox- 

 hunting and hunting the carted deer. 



The carted deer is brought to the rendezvous in his 

 cart, and having been let go and given a certain law, 

 leads the hounds and their followers for a gallop till he 

 thinks he has had enough of it. The whole affair is 

 merely a cross-country run on horseback, and of 

 hunting in the true acceptation of the term there is 

 none. There is no necessity to find landowners who 

 will preserve deer, nor to find your deer before you 

 can hunt him. Now, in fox-hunting, hours may elapse 

 and numerous coverts have to be drawn before hounds 

 find the scent of Sir Eeynard, and during that time 

 a huge field, most of whom know nothing about agri- 

 culture, are trampling upon seeds, and larking over 

 fences, and generally causing that damage which makes 

 the farmer antagonistic to sport. But the deer, when 

 released from the cart, immediately goes away and 

 avoids coverts, or, at all events, does not dwell in them. 

 Thus he saves the farmers' fields from constant tram- 

 pling, because, as a rule, he merely crosses the holding 

 en route for somewhere else, instead of running in 



