106 HUNTING AND SPORTING NOTES. 



Holly Coppice, but Borderer has his own reasons 

 for suspecting its genuineness. Thus ended our last 

 Thursday, and but for one more finishing day at 

 Hawkstone on Easter Monday, our season ends. 



Sir Watkin will go on a little longer, and so will other 

 Shropshire packs, but unless a change of weather comes 

 it will be heartless work for huntsmen as well as hounds. 

 Fences, too,- are all being laid and mended for the 

 summer, gates fastened up, and farmers must have 

 consideration shown them. Hunting men owe them 

 much. Never in my agricultural experience have I seen 

 the wheat looking so strong and well ; while, as for the 

 spring crops, how could they promise better? The land 

 works like a garden, and sowing has been carried on 

 almost uninterruptedly for the last month. Everything 

 points to a fruitful season. 



And now, my indulgent reader, "Au revoir." Like 

 Othello, " my occupation is gone," until once more 

 autumn comes round, and ''the horn of the- hunter is 

 heard on the hill." Each season, to the true sportsman, 

 as it closes, is another treasured record of the sweet past 

 — something to look back upon — something on which to 

 build an ever-shortening future. More precious as each 

 short winter and spring gather themselves into their 

 garner, never to return to us. Oh, my faithful friends, 

 turn not a deaf ear to the measured words of an elder, 

 who drank deeply of the Pirean spring of hunting — what 

 was true when he wrote sixty years ago, comes home 

 to us now with equal force. I will quote him. ''At a 

 time when all the world runs mad about foxhunting, I am 

 surprised so few gentlemen have learnt to enjoy it 

 rationally. The fashion of the present day is hard 

 riding, and at night, over the convivial board, their only 

 pleasure seems to be in relating the exploits or disasters 

 of their own or their friends' horses — not a word about 

 the best or worse hound in the pack, nor any idea ever 

 started to ascertain whether by system or by accident 

 they had contrived to carry a scent, say twenty miles, over 

 a country to kill a fox. How so great an event has been 

 achieved few modern sportsmen can with any degree of 

 ac3uracy relate. Many years ago I recollect a gentleman, 

 who kept ten horses in Leicestershire, and who had been 

 riding near me very often in a fine run, in which two 

 of the most interesting and beautiful things happened 



