320 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



own island, he can surely betake himself to fresh 

 woods and pastures new, and pursue his beloved 

 sport on some Asiatic Steppe, or Tundra, or over the 

 wild Karroos and rolling uplands of South Africa, or 

 amid the green pastures of New Zealand or the plains 

 of Australia. I, for one, will never believe that the 

 British hunter, whether he favours fox, hare, or stag, 

 will relinquish his sport, because, forsooth, his island 

 has grown too overcrowded for him. Rather do I 

 believe that if the last remaining portion of the globe 

 open to him for hunting consisted of the wet wastes 

 of the Falkland Islands, or the dreary desolation of 

 Tierra del Fuego, he would still repair thither and try 

 his luck. 



However, although some of these expectations and 

 possibilities may actually lie within the bosom of the 

 future, at present there is no instant necessity for the 

 average man of British blood to be looking quite so 

 far afield. I hold with confidence that, in our time 

 and for a good many generations thereafter, he will 

 be able to pursue his favourite method of hunting in 

 much the old way. And especially do I anticipate 

 that the hare-hunter is destined, for may a long year 

 yet, to meet, as he and his forefathers have met for 

 centuries, on some quiet village green, or by the time- 

 worn walls of some ancient manor-house, to greet his 

 friends just in the hearty old way, to listen with en- 

 raptured ears to the sound of the deep-tongued harrier, 

 to view the hare speeding from her form, to hear, as 

 the pack first opens upon the line, that burst of hound 

 melody which never yet failed to stir the heart of 

 youth or age, of man or woman, and to watch with 

 never failing ecstacy the passage and the working of 

 the hounds, as they puzzle out the infinite mazes woven 

 by one^of the cleverest and most resourceful creatures 



