310 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



domestic animals. Are these the signs of a degenerate, brutal 

 race? 



It may be argued that while all that has been said hereto- 

 fore is perfectly true and consistent with well known facts, 

 still there remains the death of an innocent creature. If that 

 could be eliminated from the chase altogether, or if their taking 

 off could be robbed of its cruel feature, as many good people 

 view it, the horror of the chase would be less a rei^roach, so 

 that the more sensitive could endorse it. First as to eliminat- 

 ing the hunt altogether from the chase, this is done in many 

 cases where a trail is laid by someone dragging a rag sprinkled 

 with anise oil and assafoetida on the ground. This is better 

 than no chase at all. Others hunt the wild fox without stop- 

 ping their earths and therefore seldom catch one. This fox 

 who kills our chickens and young lambs, the otter who kills 

 our finest trout, are most ideal game. For they are thieves 

 and vagabonds, and one always feels in their pursuit that an 

 outlaw is before him and when at last he is overtaken, that the 

 untimely death of Mrs. Farmer's hens or INIr. Farmer's trout 

 has been avenged. Some people who sanction the hunting of 

 the fox often draw the line at rabbits, wild boar and deer. On 

 many occasions it is absolutely necessary to kill off a certain 

 portion each year as already shown, and all game preserves are 

 hunted on that plan, the oldest stag always being taken except 

 when this plan does not keep them doAvn to a number the 

 preserve will carrJ^ Then the females are also taken. Still 

 there is the question of taking life that stands in the way of 

 some good meat-eating people who have probably never made 

 a study of the hunted. They do not know, perhaps, that the 

 Providence wliich permits each family to prey on some othep 

 family or to be preyed upon by some stronger family, has 

 included in the plan a special provision for robbing death of 

 its horrors and even of its sting. People with oversensitive 

 imaginations picture to themselves the horrors of such a death 



