i86 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



seldom killed, though out on the rougher moorlands the 

 ambition to kill him still holds. 



'Cubbing,' the most democratic form of the sport in one 

 way, because it may be followed on foot, is one of the few 

 sports which compels an early start. How many of us owe 

 our knowledge of early morning hours to the news, never 

 published, but breathed quietly to a few residents, that 

 hounds will be at such-and-such woods at five-thirty on such- 

 and-such days. People as a rule begin shooting at a late 



THE RUNNER AND HIS DOG 



hour, though they would be wiser to imitate the cub-hunters. 

 There are no hours in the year to equal the early autumn 

 hours ; and a wood is the place to enjoy them, cubs or no 

 cubs. As hunting, the training of the young hounds in the 

 pursuing of cubs is not a grand sport, and it may be brutal. 

 No sporting experience is more appalling than the digging 

 out of the cub from an earth; but one hopes that the 

 fighting savagery of the animal overcomes fear ; and it 

 seems so. Many a cub, whom we watch in earlier months 

 playing with the rest of the litter, will a little later reach 

 an ecstasy of the fighting spirit in which he will attack 

 anything. One has seen the cub thrust his head out of the 

 earth, and in face of the ring of hounds and men and 



