A PLEA FOR INTEREST IN HOUNDS 41 



implicit obedience to Rule 15, which says, "Whether 

 hounds are running or not, jump unnecessary fences, 

 ride over wheat, seeds, &c. You will thus show your 

 lordly contempt for the mere tiller of the soil, over 

 whose land you ride uninvited, and your laudable 

 ignorance of all that appertains to him." 



I must not quote more of these rules, but leave your 

 readers to procure this booklet for themselves — it is 

 published by Brown & Co., Salisbury. The malpractices 

 these rules expose are not new, as may be gathered 

 from the passages I have quoted : they are only the 

 old crimes over again. The overriding, the heading 

 of foxes, the riding over seeds and wheat, &c., the 

 treading on the sterns of hounds on a road, the march- 

 ing about in full cackle after the huntsman at a check, 

 the sneaking on to a covert likely to be drawn instead 

 of going to the meet, &c., &c. — only the old crimes 

 against which we cannot protest too often or too 

 strongly, and are held up to rebuke in this little 

 brochure in sufficiently amusing fashion. 



I have been accused of exaggerating the evil 

 behaviour and ignorance of hunting folk, and of being 

 unnecessarily severe upon ladies ; but I can see and 

 I can hear, and carry an easy conscience. Very 

 numerous are the anecdotes that have been told to 

 me of late, illustrative of the almost unspeakable 

 ignorance on all subjects connected with the actual 

 hunting of the fox, displayed every day hounds go 

 out by those who follow them, and particularly by 

 those on side-saddles. No doubt some of these anec- 

 dotes have a chestnutty flavour, such as the tale of 

 the lady who was told to "mind the turnips," and said, 



