22 HUNTING. 



school and the beginning of the new. With the works of the 

 latter, both serious and fictitious, from Delme Radcliffe and 

 * Nimrod,' down to ' Scrutator ' and ' Cecil,' Surtees, John 

 Mills and Whyte-Melville, we may suppose our readers to 

 be well enough acquainted ; and as we shall ourselves have 

 many occasions to consult them in the course of the following 

 pages, it would be superfluous to spend further time over them 

 here. 



When hunting began to be regarded as an organised pastime 

 with laws and arts of its own, a list was drawn up of the beasts 

 a true sportsman might legitimately occupy himself in chasing. 

 It was, of course, a pretty large one, and was divided by Twici into 

 three classes. The first contains four, distinguished as ' beasts 

 for hunting,' the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar ; 

 the second five, known as ' beasts for the chase,' the buck, the 

 doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe ; in the third come the 

 grey or badger, the wild cat, and the otter, mentioned as afford- 

 ing ' greate dysporte ' to the huntsman, but evidently regarded 

 as legitimate game only in default of something better. By 

 later writers the * beasts of the chase ' were subdivided into two 

 further classes. In the first were the buck, the doe, the bear, 

 the rein-deer, the elk and spytard, a hart of one hundred years 

 old ; in the second, which obviously includes also the original 

 third class, the fulimart, the fitchat or fitch, the cat, the badger, 

 the fox, the weasel, the martin, the squirrel, the white rat, the 

 otter, the stoat, and the pole-cat. The first division was known 

 as beasts 'of sweet flight,' to distinguish it from the others 

 who were classed as beasts of * stinking flight ; ' a distinction 

 which Strutt interprets as referring to the scent the latter give 

 when chased ; but inasmuch as the former must certainly have 

 supplied a similar means of pursuit, it most probably was de- 

 signed to distinguish the estimation in which the two classes of 

 game were held. It is at any rate clear that our ancestors, 

 when they went a-hunting, were pretty much of a mind with 

 the accommodating witness provided for one of Mr. Jaggers's 

 clients, and were prepared 'in a general way for any think.' 



