WILD LIFE ON THE SUSSEX DOWNS 



fellows, and, really, as I have watched a particularly 

 fine specimen driven out of the covert from which he 

 is so difficult to dislodge, he has appeared almost more 

 like a wolf than an English fox. Unhappily French 

 foxes have been turned down freely in some places 

 within the last few years. These are smaller, much 

 redder in colour, and show nothing like such good 

 sport. They are short-running brutes, dodging from 

 covert to covert, and seldom giving a real good chase. 

 I am convinced that in very many parts of England 

 fox-hunting has suffered greatly from these foreign 

 importations. I suppose the thing became necessary 

 — it is one of the misfortunes of over-civilisation and 

 the artificial state of modern sport — but it is, I think, 

 certain that our stout English breed has to a great 

 extent been ruined, and that at the present time foxes 

 show nothing like the great runs they used to do. It 

 is true that foxhounds may be faster than they used to 

 be, but even making due allowance for that, the fact 

 remains— and every middle-aged hunting man knows it 

 — that it is the exception nowadays to get the fine runs 

 of the good days of fox-hunting. 



I first saw fox-hunting on the Sussex downs many 

 years ago with the late Charles Shepherd, for nearly 

 forty years huntsman to Lord Leconfield's hounds. He 

 was surely one of the cheeriest and heartiest of hunts- 

 men, a real good man at his work, and quite one of the 

 old school. I well remember as a lad scrambling on 

 one's pony about the huge slopes of Chanctonbury, 

 and the fine country adjacent, with Shepherd's cheery 

 voice ringing sharp upon the clear down air. He died 

 in March, 1903, in his eighty-seventh year, having 

 hunted hounds up to, I think, his seventy-ninth or 

 eightieth year — a great achievement. In his youth 

 Shepherd, who came from the Rufford country, must 

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