NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



By the year 1830 fox-hunting in England had reached 

 the high rank and perfection which it has ever since 

 maintained. Meets of the best and most accessible 

 packs began to be frequented by more and more 

 sportsmen, and the cry of overgrown and overriding 

 fields was already being raised by worried masters and 

 irate huntsmen. It is a mistake to suppose that large 

 fields are the product of the last few years alone. This 

 evil is one which has been steadily increasing for the 

 past sixty or seventy years. The writer is old enough to 

 remember, when hunting as a lad in Northamptonshire, 

 some thirty-five years since, during Colonel Anstruther 

 Thomson's mastership of the Pytchley, that the fields 

 of that period were often exceedingly large, requiring 

 all the firmness and tact of that first-rate master and 

 brilliant amateur huntsman to keep in check. 



The best days of modern hunting may be said to 

 have reached their zenith between 1840 and 1870. The 

 landed gentry, the yeomen, and the tenant farmers 

 were then alike flourishing. In the earlier part of the 

 last century, and especially during the Napoleonic wars, 

 agriculturists made immense prices for their grain, and 

 saved much money. The sons and successors of that 

 generation were — I speak of the large tenant farmers, 

 men who occupied from 300 to 600 acres of land — with 

 few exceptions, left considerable sums of money to 

 carry on business with. Many of the old school of 

 farmers died worth from ;^i 5,000 to ;6^25,ooo. Such 

 fortunes had usually to be divided among several 

 children, but the generation of large tenant farmers, 

 which flourished between 1840 and 1870, consisted 

 mostly of substantial men, having ample capital and 

 a remunerative business in the land they occupied. It 

 can scarcely be wondered at that the hearty and well- 

 to-do farmers of that golden period enjoyed life, and 



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