PUBLIC COURSING 165 



can take his choice of ground and witness the sport 

 in the high state of perfection to which it has been 

 brought, thanks chiefly to the firm action of the 

 Altcar Club in the middle of the century. 



Time was, and not so long ago, that public cours- 

 ing was pursued in every corner of the kingdom when 

 the ground was suitable ; now, of course, matters 

 are quite different. In the South of England big and 

 important meetings have ceased to exist, except at 

 Newmarket and in Essex (where, if the stakes are some- 

 what unimportant, there is nevertheless a capital supply 

 of greyhounds). All those magnificent down lands m 

 Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, furnish possibly 

 one course for every score that used to be run less 

 than a quarter of a century ago. At Ashdown, Ames- 

 bury, and a few other places in the same district, 

 where the conditions were once simply perfect, occa- 

 sional small and very unimportant meetings are held ; 

 but the fact is that the disappearance of the hares 

 has caused the greyhounds to disappear in ' like 

 manner, and dozens of country-people gave up breed- 

 ing in disgust when tliey found that trials were almost 

 an impossibility, that the meetings were few and far 

 between, and that in order to win a good stake they 

 had to take their greyhounds a couple of hundred 

 miles or so by train. 



