THE FUTURE OF HARE-HUNTING 315 



other great centres of industry, and note the ravages 

 of smoke and soot upon the vegetation, and the filth 

 that is deposited everywhere. It makes one despair 

 sometimes for that rural England of which we have 

 for ages boasted and still continue to boast. The 

 very gunners, shooting within hail of these great 

 cities of toil, find the moors even black with soot. 

 What is to be the end of it all ? Is this country to 

 be gradually destroyed, and the state of man in this 

 island reduced to the condition of a mill-horse or 

 a mine pony, toiling, poor creature, endlessly, hope- 

 lessly, amid the most dismal of all conceivable surround- 

 ings ? Is the life of man to be sunk to such depths 

 of despair and blackness ? If so, perish our so-called 

 civilisation ! A return to the wild, natural freedom 

 of the pure savage would be infinitely preferable. 

 England is rich, the envy of the world ; but surely 

 her richness and her prosperity will have been dearly 

 purchased, if her smiling fields are all to be reduced 

 in turn, mile by mile, acre by acre, to the level of the 

 deserts of the Black Country, the hideous brick wastes 

 of the East-End of London, or the hopeless, squalid, 

 endless rows of streets upon the outskirts of some of 

 our great manufacturing towns ! These things will 

 not come in our time ; but the day, apparently, is 

 approaching when great parts of England will, to the 

 lover of nature, the man of the open air, be impossible 

 places to live in. 



Still, thanks to the fact that the east, the west, the 

 south, and some other portions of this country, have 

 not been invaded by the blight of manufactures and 

 minerals, there remain, probably for another hundred 

 or two of years, large areas where nature will still 

 show her face in its fresh and natural beauty, where 

 the wild flowers can awaken each spring, the woods 



