Hunting in the last Century. 



eccentricity cf the master — whose pleasure it was to 

 do nothing as other people did — and was conducted in 

 a manner with which, in these days, no subscriber would 

 put up for a single season, and for which indeed few 

 owners of property would now preserve foxes, even if 

 the master kept them, as Mr. Poyntz did, at his own cost. 

 The boundaries of each hunt, also, were more vague 

 and fluctuating, and more dependent on the personal 

 influence of the master. In some places different 

 packs almost jostled each other, whilst in some parts 

 large districts remained unoccupied, or only occasion- 

 ally visited : so that there are many instances on re- 

 cord of foxhounds being taken for a time into dis- 

 tant places quite unconnected with their home coun- 

 try. In these days almost all the huntable portion 

 of England is parcelled out into different hunts, with 

 definite boundaries ; and, moreover, most countries 

 are now supposed to belong not so much to the master 

 of the pack as to the general body of gentlemen of 

 whose landed property it consists. Consequently 

 these boundaries are not only more accurately defined, 

 but are also held by a more permanent tenure, and 

 with a firmer grasp ; a larger number of persons are 

 interested in preserving them ; any intrusion would be 

 an offence not only against a single brother sports- 

 man, but against a whole neighbourhood ; while the 

 unwritten law of foxhunting has taken such strong 

 possession of the public mind, that such an intrusion 

 would be considered to be as ungentlemanlike as if a 

 man had killed partridges on his neighbour's home 

 farm. But in those days people took their hounds 

 without scruple wherever there seemed to be an open- 

 ing for them ; and a popular country gentleman, with 



