262 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



cases out of a hundred, what with the hurry and 

 scurry of three or four hundred excited horsemen and 

 the precautions of the Master, who has to manage 

 and dispose his field before drawing a covert, some- 

 what Hke a regiment of cavalry, it is impossible for 

 the budding sportsman to see much of the real and 

 true inwardness of the sport in which he is supposed 

 to be taking a part. If a man wants his son to learn 

 something of the art of hunting hounds, he cannot do 

 better than enter him, as a youngster, with a pack of 

 beagles or foot-harriers, where he may glean the whole 

 of the process of the chase from find to finish. Many 

 a keen fox-hunter, who has ably hunted his own hounds, 

 has picked up the rudiments of his art in this way, and 

 has passed from beagles to harriers and from harriers 

 to foxhounds. 



In hunting harriers on foot, the same number of 

 hounds are taken out, and the process of hunting is 

 identically the same as when the hunter is mounted. 

 In some ways, I am inclined to think better sport is 

 often enjoyed on foot than on horseback. Hounds 

 are necessarily often left more to their own devices ; 

 they get away from their field and have more oppor- 

 tunity to follow their own instincts, which are, usually, 

 even more valuable to them than the huntsman's 

 judgment. It is an old, and a perfectly true maxim 

 with harriers, that the more they are left alone the 

 better the sport is. It follows that, with foot-packs, 

 the interference being less frequent, the sport shown 

 is usually of very high quality, of its kind and in its 

 own way not to be surpassed by any other open-air 

 pursuit. There seems to me to be a great and growing 

 appreciation of this form of hunting. 



