IN THE OFF-SEASON 



There are some very real, if subsidiary, 

 pleasures always reserved for the average 

 hunting man at a time of year when the 

 exigencies of the season forbid his indulgence 

 in the pleasures of the chase, and amongst 

 them may certainly be reckoned the acquisi- 

 tion of hunters for the next campaign. An 

 amusing volume might be written of the 

 various ways in which we often become 

 possessed of horses — good, bad, and indif- 

 ferent — which we afterwards turn, or try to 

 turn, to good account in the hunting-field. 

 The man whose establishment is laro^e enous^h 

 to permit of his buying several young animals, 

 and then, according to how they shape, either 

 hunting them or promptly relegating them to 



the shafts, is always an individual to be envied. 



269 



