The Hound Puppy at Walk 187 



knock him on the head with an axe. It would be the 

 same kind of thing. " Was the bird flying from you, or 

 across or toward you, when you hit it?" asks the father of 

 his son who comes running to him with his first partridge. 

 ** He was sitting on the ground," repHes the delighted boy. 

 *' Sitting on the ground ! " roars his father. " Sitting on 

 the ground ! Never let me hear of your doing such an 

 unsportsmanlike thing again. Always give the bird a 

 chance, my boy. If he does n't get up, frighten him up. 

 Then, if you are clever enough to drop him, there is some 

 credit in the shot." Such should be one of any boy's first 

 lessons. But a great deal of this butcher business goes on 

 in America, for one reason or another. A man is not sat- 

 isfied to catch fish by the skilful throwing of a fly, but must 

 buy a net or explode a charge of dynamite in the bottom 

 of the pool, and pick up the murdered fish as they float to 

 the surface. And they call this sport ! 



But ware fish, author, ware fish ! and get on with your 

 fox. As I was saying, no fox-hunter likes mobbing a fox in 

 covert, and so it is necessary to give the youngsters a lesson 

 in breaking away. They start one fox out, give him a 

 good scare with hounds after him, and when he is well out 

 of covert they call off the hounds to bustle out some more. 



No one has better described cub-hunting than Somer- 

 ville in *'The Chase," that epic of the hunt from which 

 we have already borrowed more than once to enrich our 

 own pictures : 



Easy the lessons of the youthful train 



When instinct prompts and when example guides. 



If the too forward younker, at the head, 



