The Foxhound. 55 



packs of hounds, including harriers and otter hounds, 

 hunting there, are kept up at a cost of not less 

 than 600,000/. per annum. Of course such figures, 

 in the absence of carefully compiled statistics, can 

 only be approximate. Some few years ago, a well 

 known master of hounds (Lord Middleton) found it 

 necessary to appeal to his country to support him in 

 continuing the hunt by subscription, he stating that 

 his family had spent over 100,000/. on the sport. 



'' 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 

 thoroughly baffle 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 pack ; 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, or 

 those of the Lord Byron type. 



Foxhounds have for more than three hundred years 

 been carefully bred and reared for hunting purposes, 



