LETTER XXV. 271 



Year after year we hear the constantly-repeated cry 

 of — bad season — no sport — too much rain for one, or too 

 little for another country — no scent. Somehow or other, 

 the weather has always to bear the blame, and fortu- 

 nately the weather has very wide shoulders, and cannot 

 complain. A pretty state of things we should have, could 

 every man choose the day best suited to his own peculiar 

 fancy. As, however, we cannot alter the weather, we 

 must try to meet it in the best way we can. Not having 

 the choice of making the weather for the hounds, the 

 next best thing to do is to make the hounds for the 

 weather; and were this matter a little more carefully 

 attended to, we should not hear quite so many complaints 

 about the weather. Where good sport forms the excep- 

 tion, and not the rule, in any professedly good establish- 

 ment, the fault lies not in the weather, but in one of 

 these two things — the hounds or the management. For 

 the last few years the winter season has certainly been 

 in favour of hunting, yet the accounts of good sport are 

 scanty. The fault, I am incHned to think, lies in the 

 present wild steeple-chasing system of trying to ride a 

 fox to death the moment he is found, without giving him 

 a fair start for his life. 



It being admitted that woodland foxes afford always 

 the best runs, why not treat all foxes as woodland foxes ? 

 Give them a fair start, and let the hounds settle quietly 

 down to the scent, without that extraordinary and un- 

 sportsmanlike hurry-scurrying, which is the general prac- 

 tice in these fast days. So long as the present system 

 is pursued, really good sport will never be obtained. It 

 is too much the fashion to cry down gentlemen huntsmen, 

 for what reason I never could understand, unless the 



