FOX-HUNTING AND ITS FUTURE 



funds contribute very inadequately. Rich men, who 

 send a cheque for twenty-five or fifty guineas to the 

 hunt secretary, and a trifle towards the poultry account, 

 think they have behaved handsomely enough. Yet the 

 same men will not grudge hundreds, sometimes even 

 thousands, towards a grouse moor, or a salmon river, 

 or a deer forest, or a yacht, or a motor-car. It is clear 

 that if hunting is to go on, rich men, who must and will 

 hunt, will have to pay a great deal more for their sport 

 than they have done hitherto. Wire fencing, a product 

 of hard times with the farmer, has now reached such 

 proportions that, in some counties, sport is almost com- 

 pletely ruined by its existence. Hunting men now 

 gallop across the land with feelings very different from 

 those of the joyous and careless days of thirty years ago, 

 and fences are often ridden at with something akin to 

 a shudder, lest the hated wire should lie concealed. A 

 few years since the late Mr. Heywood-Lonsdale, then 

 master of the Shropshire hunt, pointed out that hunt- 

 ing would have to be abandoned if the wire evil were 

 not abated. Yet, with few exceptions, the wire trouble 

 is a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Small 

 farmers, who cannot afford expensive fencing, naturally 

 betake themselves to the cheap, if objectionable, wire. 

 Given sufficient funds, in nearly every county in the 

 kingdom wire can be removed and replaced at the end 

 of each hunting season. The farmers themselves, as a 

 class, would be as pleased as hunting men to see the 

 thing done. In some counties this difficulty is being 

 dealt with in the right way ; in others, if richer men 

 wish to hunt much longer, they will assuredly have to 

 pay for the expense of wire removal. 



Here and there it is possible that in future some com- 

 pensation will have to be paid to the poorer farmer for 

 the right to hunt on his land. Hunting rents, at the 



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