142 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



pleasure but possible profit from *the sale. Hunting 

 is, to a considerable extent, a matter of locality. In 

 some districts it is the one great winter amusement, 

 and almost every farmer who has got a horse rides 

 more or less. In others which are not near the centres 

 of hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers 

 to go out. On and near the downs coursing hares is 

 much followed* Then towards the spring, before the 

 grass begins to grow long, comes the local steeple- 

 chase perhaps the most popular gathering of the year. 

 It is held near some small town, often rather a large 

 village than a town, where it would seem impossible 

 to get a hundred people together. But it happens 

 to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in a wide 

 hunting district, and is well known to every man who 

 vides a horse within twenty miles. 



Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the 

 great houses of the neighbourhood. The labouring 

 people flock there en masse ; some farmers lend 

 wagons and teams to the labourers that they may 

 go. An additional a personal interest attaches to 

 many of the races because the horses are local horses, 

 and the riders known to the spectators. Some of 

 these meetings are movable : they are held near one 

 town one year and another the next, so as to travel 

 round the whole hunting district returning, say, the 

 fourth year to the first place. Most of the market 

 towns of any importance have their annual agricultural 

 show now, 'which is well attended. 



In the spring comes the rook-shooting ; the date 



