XX 

 FARMERS AND CITY MEN 



OBLIGATIONS OF HUNTING MEN TO FARMERS FARMERS* COMPEN- 

 SATION AND DAMAGES CITY MEN IN THE COUNTRY SNOBS 



MAN may have the best hunter money can 

 buy, the latest thing in hunting-togs and sad- 

 dle equipments, hounds with the best noses in 

 the world and the most "heavenly music"; 

 but he cannot ride across a farmer's field except with the 

 farmer's consent, given or implied. 



Hunting men, especially city men, seldom appreciate the 

 obligations the hunt is under to the farmers whose land 

 they ride over. In the city signs of " Keep off the grass " 

 or "No trespassing" are instinctively obeyed ; but let a man 

 come down into the Genesee Valley, not alone and on 

 foot, but with forty, fifty, or seventy men on horses, and go 

 galloping across a farmer's meadows, and it is taken as a 

 matter of course. The sportsmen think, perhaps, if they 

 think at all: "Oh, the farmer sells his oats and hay and 

 raises hunters which we buy at long prices. He ought not 

 to complain." Surely one has heard some hunting man 

 say this. They should be advised, however, never to repeat 

 it ; for one thing, because the supposed compensation to the 



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