78 UNASKED ADVICE. 



seemed to be going to the liuntsmmi, but always from the 

 whip. This is clearly wrong, and sport with such an 

 establishment will be rather the result of good luck than 

 good guidance. Another favourite excuse for bad sport 

 is that the hounds are pressed upon. Now, in most 

 cases, this is the master^s look-out. If he does his duty 

 (of course tempering the fortiter in re with the suaviter 

 in moclo), the field will usually do theirs. But the office 

 of M. F. H., and the pains and pleasures attended there- 

 upon, is not a subject to be lightly entered upon. 



Judging from many letters in the sporting papers on 

 the subject of hunting, it would appear that I am not 

 the only person who takes exception at the too common 

 way in which hounds are handled in the field. This 

 is decidedly a case in which, as the proverb says, 

 ^' lookers-on see most of the game,^^ being less likely 

 to be prejudiced than persons directly connected with 

 any establishment that may be undergoing criticism. 

 But there are many causes which militate against good 

 sport with foxhounds besides the want of science on the 

 part of the huntsman. The ^'^ raw material,^^ for one 

 thing, is deteriorated — the fox himself is not the animal 

 which he was in the days of the great Meynell. Times 

 are changed, the face of the country is very much 

 altered, and the character of every wild animal has to 

 be accommodated to the existing order of things. 

 Without entering on the vexed question of foxes versus 

 pheasants, I may say that the mania for slaughtering 

 half-tame game is the principal enemy with which a 

 master of hounds has to contend. Some owners of 

 coverts will not have them drawn until shooting is over ; 

 some allow the hounds to come, but do not find them a 

 fox, or at all events a fox worth having ; while others, 



