THE FUTURE OF HARE-HUNTING 319 



ancestors so much delighted. Various parts of remote 

 Europe, or of yet remoter Asia, Africa, or America, 

 may, in centuries to come, still continue to be used 

 as hunting-grounds, when much of western Europe 

 is overlaid with bricks and mortar, and overhung with 

 its hideous canopy of smoke. It is by no means a 

 wild stretch of fancy to imagine that such may be 

 the case. Thousands of our countrymen already 

 go abroad for their sport ; and, as England becomes 

 more overcrowded and communication more rapid, 

 tens of thousands will betake themselves to yet remoter 

 fields. I do not say that in all these countries good 

 hare-hunting or good fox-hunting will be obtained 

 off-hand. In South Africa, for instance, where im- 

 mense wastes of veldt will afford playgrounds and 

 sporting-fields for centuries to come, the indigenous 

 hare of the country is not a good one for hunting, as 

 we understand hunting at home. He has a nasty 

 habit of going to ground, and, although I have followed 

 English foxhounds on horseback, in rousing chases 

 after the jackal and small antelopes of Bechuana- 

 land, I should be sorry to have to hunt any of the 

 various species of South African hare with a pack of 

 harriers or beagles. 



Many a laughable course have I viewed across the 

 veldt from the back of my pony or the fore-kist of 

 my waggon, as our mongrel pack of waggon dogs 

 raved frantically after some errant hare ; but I doubt 

 very much whether much fun would be obtained in 

 any other way. The beast would most surely go to 

 earth in half a mile or a mile, and a fresh find would 

 have constantly to be undertaken. Hares, however, 

 are easily acclimatised, and our English species already 

 flourishes in New Zealand and elsewhere. When the 

 merry British hare-hunter has been driven from his 



