/iDastcra of tbe IRoval Buchbounbs 217 



by the universal expressions of sympathy which poured 

 in upon them when the terrible news came that their 

 gallant soldier son, Major the Honourable Charles 

 Coventry, had been killed at Krugersdorp in the mad 

 raid of Dr Jameson. Happily that news proved to be 

 false, and, when the sorrowing parents' mourning was 

 suddenly turned into joy, the congratulations were as 

 hearty as the condolences had been sincere. 



Whether, when a Liberal administration again comes 

 into power, as in the natural course of events must some 

 day happen, the Royal Buckhounds will be abolished is 

 a question which it would be unprofitable to discuss. 

 There are those, of course, who maintain that the hunting 

 of carted stags is cruel and unsportsmanlike, and, on that 

 ground alone, call for the abolition of the Buckhounds. I 

 hav^e usually found that those who hold this view have 

 little, if any, personal knowledge of what a run with the 

 Queen's hounds is like. Lord Ribblesdale and Lord 

 Coventry, who are both true sportsmen, and therefore 

 averse from inflicting needless pain upon any living 

 creature, do not see anything cruel about the sport, and 

 I take it that their opinion is of far more value than that 

 of humanitarian faddists, who are utterly ignorant of the 

 details of the sport which, purely on hearsay evidence, 

 they condemn. ' If,' says Lord Ribblesdale, ' the Queen's 

 pleasure and the vicissitudes of politics gave me the 

 chance of doing so — say to-morrow — I would gladly hunt 

 the Queen's hounds for another three years. I should 

 not say this if I thought it cruel.' There is more force in 

 the arguments of those who object to the Buckhounds as 

 entailing a useless expenditure of public money, for which 

 there is no adequate return in the way of real sport. 

 Lord Ribblesdale admits that ' wire in Middlesex, the 



