THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 87 



he or she is of mature years it stands to reason that he 

 or she can know little of the sport. Hunting literature 

 and general theories in connection with hunting 

 matters may have been carefully studied, but until 

 there has been a considerable amount of real experi- 

 ence knowledge must be strictly limited. And more- 

 over people vary greatly in their power of assimilating 

 knowledge of this description. To one man there 

 may be an inherited knowledge of woodcraft, a mind 

 capable of taking in all the ins and outs of hunting with 

 great rapidity, a bump of locality, and, in fact, all the 

 essential qualities which will enable him to know as 

 much at the end of his first season as another man 

 can hardly attain in his lifetime. 



There is perhaps nothing more curious in connection 

 with hunting than this varied capability for under- 

 standing it. Two men may be equally imbued with a 

 love of the sport, and while one of them gains some 

 fresh knowledge on almost every hunting day of his 

 life, the other will very gradually arrive at a small 

 amount of knowledge, which will be perhaps just suffi- 

 cient to prevent him from making a fool of himself. 

 Both may be equally enthusiastic, but one has the 

 capability of receiving and storing up impressions, 

 while the other plods along, no doubt enjoying himself 

 as much as his neighbour, but gathering no knowledge 

 by the way, and in fact, after a certain time, not bene- 

 fiting in the least by his experience. 



Some men become weatherwise ; others are always 

 vague and uncertain, and will go to a meet when it is 

 far too hard to hunt, and stay at home on a doubtful 

 day. The weatherwise man will always know when 

 the ground is fit and when it is not, and he will also 

 know to a nicety what the master's views are likely to 



