230 THE HUNTING FIELD 



with the respect it deserves — we allude to the noble 

 sport of Tuft Hunting. True, Lord William Lennox 

 launched a novel under that title ; but as we prefer 

 letting other people read our thoughts and ideas to 

 reading the thoughts and ideas of other people, 

 without meaning the slightest disrespect to his lord- 

 ship, we can candidly say we have never read his 

 work ; therefore we trust, whatever may be the 

 similarity of ideas, that we shall not be accused of 

 " cribbing " from him. 



Tuft Hunting is a fine, delicate, scientific, enter- 

 prising, subtle amusement. If the proper "study of 

 mankind is man," surely the pursuit of a lord must 

 be proper beyond all contradiction. 



We have looked into Bailey, Richardson, and 

 several of the old dictionaries, to see if they throw 

 any light on the origin of the term, but we have 

 drawn them all blank. Bailey gives " Tuft " {iouffe F) 

 a lock of hair, or bunch of ribbons, &c., also the crest 

 of a bird, and then "Tuft (with botanists), a thicket 

 of trees, bunch of grass," &c. ; while Richardson 

 deals much in the same sort of description, giving 

 "Tuft — the top, or summit," leading one to suppose 

 that one might say, "the tuft of the morning," instead 

 of the "top of the morning to you," a species of 

 phraseology we never heard indulged in. In the 

 long tail of quotations with which this worthy gentle- 

 man obscures the meaning of words, there is one 

 allusion to hunting, certainly, but not with the pack 

 we allude to. The quotation is as follows : — 



"With his hounds 

 The labouring hunter tufts the thick unbarbed grounds, 

 ^^^^e^e harbour'd is the hart." 



That is not our pack — ours are the two-legged hounds 

 — the talking, babbling, fawning, courting, humbugging, 

 glozing things called men. After all is said and done, 

 we are inclined to adopt the hypothesis (to make use 



