CHAPTER XIL 



CONCLUSION. 



Just lately I have observed that hunting field manners 

 are far worse than they used to be, and, though some of 

 the biggest offenders are anything but novices, it is 

 nevertheless a fact that many of the beginners are in 

 these days quite a nuisance during their period of 

 novitiate. It would appear that the veneration and 

 respect which a former generation of boys and girls — and 

 of older people who were new to hunting — used to 

 possess have entirely departed, and now the beginner 

 often bustles and squeezes in the unfairest manner, 

 with almost a total disregard not only of ordinary 

 civihty, but of the established customs of the hunting 

 field. There are, of course, well-behaved children 

 and plenty of novices who would on no account offend 

 against the canons of sport, but, at the same time, 

 nearly every hunt has just now what may almost 

 be termed a rough element — men, and sometimes I 

 am sorry to say, women, who push and squeeze when in 

 a crowd, who cut in at a fence and force their way 

 past at a gateway without the slightest apology, who 

 often fail to hold the gate for the next comer, and who 

 are at times totally deaf to loud-shouted warnings 



