Practical Hints for 

 Hunting Novices. 



CHAPTER I. 

 THE YOUTHFUL BEGINNER. 



fHE CONDITIONS OF LIVING have so greatly 

 changed within the last generation or so that 

 in a majority of hunts the field is largely composed of 

 men and women who have been brought up in towns 

 or in suburban districts, metropolitan or provincial, 

 as the case may be, and who have, therefore, not been 

 in a position to learn what may be called the rudiments 

 of the chase. These novices in all that pertains to 

 matters of venery, unless they are lucky enough to 

 escape notice, are very likely to be a source of mirth 

 to their better-informed neighbours. No one likes 

 being laughed at, and a few hints, if carefully digested, 

 may quite possibly save a certain amount of heartburn- 

 ing. As a broad rule the boys and 'girls who begin to 

 hunt early are country born and bred, and have been 

 from infancy in a position to know something about 

 hunting. All of them are not so happily placed, and 

 there are few hunting people who have not, at some 



