126 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



answers capitally, but it is costly work, and few 

 ordinary countries could afford the expense. It is a 

 sad reflection that the whole trouble of wire could be 

 removed if only the landlords were a little better off. 

 They have only to give timber to their tenants, and the 

 wire would disappear as if by magic. No decent farmer 

 can find any pleasure in putting up such death-traps, but 

 he must mend his fences and keep his stock in some- 

 how, and if he has no rails he must obviously use wire. 

 Moreover, in an age in which, thanks to our " free " 

 trade, the growing of corn is no longer a profitable 

 investment, the farmer has to keep more stock and 

 requires correspondingly more fence than he did of 

 old. On the Berkshire and Wiltshire downs, in my 

 part of the country, the farmers, instead of keeping 

 only sheep, which can be herded all day by one boy 

 and a good sheep-dog, cover their lands with cattle. 

 These require fencing in, so that where we once had 

 miles on miles of good sound down-land, stretching 

 half over the length and breadth of two counties, is 

 now a veritable birdcage of wire fencing, so badly 

 gated that if hounds go fast it is exceedingly difficult 

 to keep near them. Mercifully, there is hardly any 

 barbed wire in all these miles of fencing, else hunting 

 would soon have to be abandoned, as hounds would 

 be cut to ribbons. Still, there is quite enough even 

 there, and it is on the increase. 



The most hideous, but too familiar form of mending 

 is to stretch a couple of strands of barbed wire across 

 a gap. This is an almost certain source of disaster, 

 whether to the child out on his pony or the old Squire, 



