54 Modern Dogs. 



estimate the cost of keeping up the kennels, in- 

 cluding hounds, food^ wages of hunt servants, 

 masters' expenses, &c., at over three million pounds 

 per annum. Nor do these figures attempt to cover 

 the ordinary expenses disbursed by those hunting 

 men who have not hounds of their own, the cost 

 of their horses, their keep, and other items. What 

 in addition these amount to cannot well be ascer- 

 tained, but he will be a bold man who attempts 

 to deny that foxhunting, as one of our national 

 sports, possesses a place in the economy of the 

 State. Special trains on our great railway system 

 are repeatedly run to fashionable meets of fox- 

 hounds. Some large hotels are to a considerable 

 extent supported by customers who visit them 

 because of their contiguity to foxhound countries. 

 We have been called a nation of shopkeepers 

 — a nation of foxhunters would have been more 

 appropriate. One way and another the expenditure 

 upon this healthy amusement during each succes- 

 sive season may be reckoned in millions of pounds 

 sterling, and still there are so called humanitarians 

 who decry the sport as a discredit to our country. 

 Lord Yarborough estimated the cost of hound keep- 

 ing at over four and a half millions yearly, and 

 estimates that 99,000 horses are engaged therein. 

 Again it is said that in Yorkshire alone over twenty 



