HUNTING PEOPLE. 397 



been drafted to another pack. Therefore it would 

 be far more satisfactory and encouraging to puppy 

 walkers for the judging to be on a day fixed for them 

 to take their young charges to the kennels. In bygone 

 days when country squires lived on their land and 

 their tenants were under contract to walk puppies, the 

 present arrangement no doubt answered well enough, 

 because it was to the tenant's interest to do his best to 

 please his landlord; but times have changed since then. 

 The large majority of people who hunt nowadays, rent 

 hunting boxes for the season, and take so little interest 

 in country life that they fly off to town on the first 

 appearance of frost, and are not seen again until the 

 land is fit to be ridden over. When the season ends, 

 they disappear till the following one. Few of them 

 know anv of the resident farmers or inhabitants of 

 hunting centres even by sight, or want to know them. 

 This snobbish exclusiveness is very harmful to the 

 interests of hunting, because the farmers are under 

 no obligation to them — quite the reverse — and a farmer 

 can, if he likes, refuse to allow them to ride over 

 his land. Therefore, when hunting people show 

 farmers no civility, the agriculturists naturally do 

 not care to go to the trouble and expense of 

 walking hunt puppies, as several farmers have told 

 me, unless they are given a better inducement to 

 do so than present arrangements offer. Then again, 

 in judging puppies returned from walk, supposing the 

 judging takes place at once, as it should do, only 

 the condition of the puppies, and not their 



