HUNTING WITH THE COTTESMORE 197 



With each generation of sportsmen many changes 

 must necessarily come about to suit the tempera- 

 ment of the age, and though hunting is a most 

 conservative sport, so that those who have ridden 

 longest resent any sort of innovation or change, yet 

 a forward and progressive tendency is necessary to 

 preserve its vitality, and bring a time- 

 honoured institution right up to date. 

 The older school of sportsmen, who 

 rode with the celebrated huntsmen of 

 the last generation, and enjoyed the 

 best years of their life, during long 

 tenures of office, under one exponent 

 of the noble science, cannot be ex- 

 cepted to welcome with enthusiasm a 

 new constellation of talent, whose . ,, ^u . u 



' Arthur Thatcher. 



brilliancy promises to eclipse the 

 glamour that surrounds the doings of the past. 

 Time alone must decide the merits of each genera- 

 tion when weighed in the balance, but those who 

 have hunted fifteen or twenty seasons can claim to 

 have seen two different systems of hunting the fox 

 in Leicestershire, and will not be too old or bigoted 

 to admit that the best of sport has been enjoyed 

 with each. 



Tom Firr has been singled out as the model of a 

 Leicestershire huntsman, and even in this rapid age, 

 when the ideals of yesterday are so quickly replaced 

 by the triumphs of the hour, the great huntsman's 

 name is mentioned as a standard of comparison for 

 those following in his footsteps. The reason that 

 Tom Firr's memory survives his generation is because 

 his methods were in advance of the age, and he was 

 one of the very few whose nerve never failed, riding 

 at the age of fifty-eight, in his last season at Quorn, 

 as brilliantly as when he first joined the pack. 



