THE FIELD 117 



mas-time they often have two-thirds of the coverts in 

 the country closed to them. If the season is an early 

 one, and the leaves come away quickly, most of the 

 covert shooting, in an ordinary country, is got through 

 in November ; if the leaves are slow to fall the latter 

 part of November and the beginning of December are 

 the busiest times with the shooter, but almost every 

 owner or renter of coverts keeps some of them for 

 Christmas. 



Very often there are boys from school or college ; 

 nearly always there are Christmas guests, and thus it 

 happens that a master of hounds a week or two before 

 Christmas has received notices by the dozen that cer- 

 tain coverts are going to be shot during the holiday 

 period. Only last winter we met a master of hounds in 

 London, during the week between Christmas and the 

 New Year, and as we knew that it was one of his hunt- 

 ing days, and that he had the greatest aversion to 

 losing a day's sport, we asked him why he was not at 

 work. He then told us — his is to a great extent a wood- 

 land country — that he had attempted no meets for the 

 week until Saturday, owing to the Christmas shooting 

 parties. Now we are not going to write a word against 

 shooting parties, especially those held at Christmas- 

 time, but surely some of the hunting folk should com- 

 pare notes at the particular time of the year, and try to 

 arrange that some country should be left for hounds. 



In many countries Boxing Day and New Year's Day 

 meets are special features of the holiday season, when 

 hundreds of people come out for their annual hunt, 

 and when dozens of horses are taken from their daily 

 routine of harness-work and become hunters for the 

 nonce. Perhaps these occasions are made more of in 

 those countries where hunting is the foremost and most 



