302 THE HUNTING FIELD 



leave off. But to the close of the season, for we are no 

 advocates for the family slaughtering of " Mayfoxes." 



\\'inter slipped away beautifully, to the delight of foxhunters 

 and the Wenham Lake Ice Company, and the dismay of 

 "native industry" among the confectioners and salmon 

 picklers. But for the "woodcocks," peculiar to Christmas, we 

 should never have known it had been here. We are not un- 

 reasonable in our desires, and if we get the \'ear fairly 

 hunted out, and a few daj-s for the boys at Christmas, we never 

 grumble at a fortnight's frost or so ; but this year the weather 

 was kinder than we even desired — January was open from end 

 to end — whole thirty-one days — a bumper month. There might 

 be a sprinkling of snow here and there, and a night or two's 

 frost, but as a whole, hounds were never stopped. February 

 we have recorded. The early part of the last week of that 

 month was as full of warmth and vegetation as man}- ordinary 

 Mays or Junes. The trees were all budding, the hedges were 

 all bursting into leaf, and gentlemen rode up to their horses' 

 girths in turnip-tops. 



Our " oldest inhabitant" — for all discreet authors keep an 

 oldest inhabitant of their own — our oldest inhabitant always 

 shook his head, however, when he looked in upon us, and 

 we observed upon the extraordinarj- fineness of the season, and 

 the fact of winter having forgotten us. " Don't halloo before 

 you are clear of the wood," the old gentleman used to say, for 

 he was a hunter in his youth, though when that youth was 

 nobody knows. " You II catch it jct" he used to sa\-, in the 

 oracular style peculiar to old gentlemen speaking what they 

 think parables. 



Well, we will let him have his fling through January, 

 for we thought it likely we should " ctrtch it," and we 

 backed him well into February too, but when the birds 

 began to sing and Covent-garden to blow, why we thought 

 it was time to follow the fashion, and throw "■ previous 



