222 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



farmers does not amount to enough in a year to be worth 

 mentioning. It is a basin of very old chaff; small won- 

 der the farmer only smiles sceptically but is never really 

 appeased by such veritable nonsense. 



So many writers on hunting have repeated this sort of 

 thing so often that they have come to believe it. Their 

 wishes are fathers to their theories. Yet it is a false doctrine 

 which one should wish to see set right. 



Can they mean to say that if hunting men did not move 

 into a country the farmer would have no market for his 

 crops ? 



" Of course not ; but there is the sale of his hunters," 

 they contend. 



And are there no other animals he can raise ? Is there 

 no other market for hunters ? Is theirs the only club on 

 earth ? They talk as if the farmer would starve if it were 

 not for the sale of his products to hunting men. When 

 they say the farmer ought to welcome the hunting men 

 across his fields for what he gets out of the hunt, they insult 

 his intelligence. Where do the hunting men buy their 

 hay ? Nine out of ten buy of the dealer in town. Their 

 oats are ordered by telephone, and may never have seen the 

 farmer's lands which the buyers hunt over. Nor is the 

 hunting season the only time when the farmer can sell oats. 

 As for hunters, nine out of ten are picked up by the dealers, 

 who buy them, perhaps, for scarcely fifty dollars more than 

 they would have had to pay for a farm-horse, no more than 

 they would have to pay for a good coach or standard bred 

 horse. No ; all this talk about the farmers' compen- 

 sation is only another instance of the parrot talk with 



