174 FOX-HUNTING 



hounds must to a great extent be made self- 

 reliant and left to hunt themselves. But fox- 

 hunting, to be the real thing, must have dash 

 and go. To spend half your life standing by a 

 gorse watching a huntsman sauntering about, 

 evidently equally pleased if he can catch a 

 fox within its precincts as in the open ; to 

 march leisurely from one draw to the next ; 

 to see hounds kept to the skulking fox when 

 old Caesar has taken the open ; to follow a 

 pottering hunt through hand - gates and 

 across fences, when the huntsman's course is 

 pioneered by timber-felling and gap-making 

 servants, is not hunting. 



There are few ideal huntsmen. There is 

 many a good kennel-huntsman, many a good 

 rider to hounds who carries the horn ; but 

 they mostly fall into two categories, hound- 



