MODERN CONDITIONS OF HUNTING 45 



minimum, not for a day or two, but for three or four 

 seasons. 



To thoroughly realise what a terrible curse mange is 

 one must have hunted in a country while the epidemic 

 has been at its worst, and we need hardly say that in 

 many countries, some few years ago, matters had 

 reached so terrible a pitch that it was hardly worth 

 while to be at the expense of keeping horses. There 

 are doubtless many hunting folk who never thoroughly 

 realised what was taking place, firstly because many 

 foxes have been able to run pretty well while mangy, 

 and secondly because the odd, clean fox never abso- 

 lutely disappeared. It was the case, however, that for 

 some seasons certain packs of hounds hunted three or 

 four mangy foxes for every clean one, and to give 

 chapter and verse the North Durham, in the season of 

 1903-4, only killed three clean foxes, against some 

 twenty to thirty brace of mangy ones. We were, so to 

 speak, present at the beginning of the outbreak (in a 

 southern country), when it first began to be realised 

 that the disease was an epidemic, and not a casual, 

 quickly disappearing visitation. 



Since then we have hunted in half a dozen countries, 

 where mange could be studied in its various stages, and 

 we have also been a good deal behind the scenes, and 

 have been aware of the immense trouble which masters 

 of hounds have had, not only in the matter of arrang- 

 ing meets, and drawing coverts where they knew the 

 mange was bad, but in their attempts to restock their 

 countries after the season was over. In fact, it may 

 safely be said that to the ordinary foxhunter only 

 one side of the mange question was ever revealed. If 

 he was an observing sportsman he could not fail to 

 notice the falling off in sport, but in many countries the 



