The Foxhound. 43 



the seventeen packs of hounds, including harriers, 

 hunting there are kept up at a cost of not less 

 than 500, ooo/. per annum. Of course such figures, 

 in the absence of carefully compiled statistics, can 

 only be approximate. 



" The fox was made to be hunted, and not to kill 

 geese and lambs," said a sporting farmer to me one 

 day, " and he likes it too," continued the good 

 agriculturist, " or would he take such long rounds as 

 he does when he could lurk and skulk about and 

 baffle the hounds whenever inclined to do so." 

 Maybe our good red fox does like to be hunted ; at 

 any rate, when bedraggled and beaten he seldom 

 looks sad and pitiful, and the hunter loves him as 

 much as he does his hounds ; and why should he 

 not love him and hunt him at the same time ? The 

 most kindly of all men, Izaak Walton, implies that 

 an angler should love the worm with which he baits 

 his hook, and no one decried such sympathy, 

 excepting, perhaps, the cruellest men of the Lord 

 Byron type. 



Foxhounds have for more than three hundred years 

 been carefully bred and reared for hunting purposes, 

 and for that length of time the sport has been 

 carried on in England pretty much on the same 

 lines as now, taking into consideration the change in 

 our mode of living and in the cultivation of the 



