no Wild Life in a Southern County 



rabbit-burrows are ferreted : the holes can be more con- 

 veniently approached then, and the frost is supposed to 

 give the rabbit a better flavour. 



About Christmas-time, half in joke and half in earnest, 

 n, small party often agree to shoot as many blackbirds as 

 they can, if possible to make up the traditional twenty-four 

 for a pie. The blackbird pie is, of course, really an occa- 

 sion for a social gathering, at which cards and music are 

 forthcoming. Though blackbirds abound in every hedge, 

 it is by no means an easy task to get the required number 

 just when wanted. After January the guns are laid aside, 

 though some ferreting is still going on. 



The better class of farmers keep hunters, and ride con- 

 stantly to the hounds ; so do some of the lesser men who 

 ' make ' hunters, and ride not only for pleasure but possible 

 profit from the sale. Hunting is, to a considerable extent, 

 a matter of locality. In some districts it is the one great 

 winter amusement, and almost every farmer who has got a 

 horse rides more or less. In others which are not near the 

 centres of hunting, it is rather an exception for the farmers 

 to go out. On and near the Downs coursing hares is much 

 followed. Then towards the spring, before the grass begins 

 to grow long, comes the local steeplechase perhaps the 

 most popular gathering of the year. It is held near some 

 small town, often rather a large village than a town, where 

 it would seem impossible to get a hundred people together. 

 But it happens to be one of the fixed points, so to say, in 

 a wide hunting district, and is well known to every man 

 who rides a horse within twenty miles. 



Numerous parties come to the race-ground from the 

 great houses of the neighbourhood. The labouring people 

 flock there en masse ; some farmers lend waggons and teams 

 to the labourers that they may go. An additional a 



