EDITOR'S PREFACE 



In the following pages a keen all-round sportsman 

 has given what may claim to be in the nature of an 

 exhaustive account, both practical and historic, of 

 hare-hunting. While he has not hesitated to draw on 

 the works of such classic authorities as Somervile, 

 Beckford and " Stonehenge," it is mainly to his own 

 personal knowledge of a fine sport, supplemented 

 where necessary by information generously given by 

 living authorities, including many Masters of existing 

 packs of harriers, beagles, or bassets, that his book 

 owes its extraordinary interest. 



What is likely, over and above the great pains which 

 Mr. Bryden has evidently taken with his record, to 

 strike the reader is the hopeful tone of his remarks. 

 He could not, of course, blind himself to the prejudicial 

 effect of the spread of bricks and mortar, or to certain 

 conditions of modern agriculture, which tend to limit 

 the opportunities for hunting hare. Like other wild 

 animals, the hare has unavoidably retired from the 



