FOX-HUNTING TYPES 253 



prosecution only for the satisfaction of being able 

 to say that they have done so. Yet there seems to 

 btB no other discoverable reason for the presence of 

 some folks in the hunting-field. The wearing of a 

 scarlet coat is said to attract some thither, but the 

 pleasure derived from going so arrayed must pall after 

 a time and satiety follow. No interest in woodcraft, 

 no vaulting ambition to negotiate timber or twig, 

 has drawn forth this particular type of fox-hunter 

 from cosy fireside to the rawness of the chill covert- 

 side ; but a certain sense of duty sustains him through 

 the ordeal, the duty he owes to society which compels 

 him to hunt so many days in the week for so many 

 weeks in the year. 



" Only a fortnight more of this, thank God ! " mur- 

 mured a well-known society butterfly of the Victorian 

 Era, as they picked him up after a complicated sort 

 of fall with the York and Ainsty. He was Yorkshire, 

 you see, and bore a name that is a household word 

 in the shire of many acres ; therefore, he would never 

 have shirked his season's hunting had he hated it 

 even more poisonously than I feel sure he always did. 



The great increase in the number of foxhound packs 

 of course bespeaks an increase in the number of their 

 followers ; but yet, if an analysis of the hunting-field 

 were taken, it would be found that it is with certain 

 packs only that this increase has taken place. Many 

 most renowned establishments in England where sport 

 is consistently good have fewer folk hunting with them 

 now than of yore. These packs will generally be found 

 in counties where game preservation is on the increase, 

 and new-comers have somewhat overpowered the old 



