PERILS AND PENALTIES 171 



of his time, after having hunted a pack of hounds unhurt 

 for several years, lost his life at last by a fall from his horse 

 as he was returning home. A surgeon of my acquaintance 

 has assured me that in thirty years' practice in a sporting 

 country he had not once an opportunity of setting a bone 

 for a sportsman, although ten packs of hounds were kept 

 in the neighbourhood. This gentleman, surely, must have 

 been much out of luck, or hunting cannot be so dangerous 

 as it is thought." 



Another objection to hunting is the damage done to the 

 crops. The late Mr Delme Radcliffe, however, stoutly 

 maintained that this was a popular fallacy, and gave the 

 following among other instances of the benefits which 

 farmers derived from the trampling of their fields by the 

 followers of hounds. 



" I was expressing," he says, " my opinion upon this topic 

 very lately to Lord Gage, and was rejoiced to find one 

 so competent to judge of agricultural matters thoroughly 

 agreeing with me. He assured me that on his estate in 

 Sussex he had a field last season sown with a peculiar sort 

 of wheat remarkable for its tenderness, and on that account 

 he had endeavoured to preserve it, but found this impos- 

 sible. The hounds frequently ran over it, and upon one 

 occasion killed their fox in the centre, followed, of course, 

 by every horse within reach of the scene. To his surprise, 

 the crop very much exceeded his utmost expectations, and 

 was thicker and finer on and around the spot where, by 

 the death of the fox, it had been more trampled upon than 

 in any other part." I wish that all farmers would see the 

 thing in the same light. 



Delme Radcliffe died comparatively recently, and yet 

 when one comes across such a passage as this in his well- 

 known book The Noble Science, he seems removed from 

 the present generation by a century. Writing of the intro- 

 duction of railways, he says : — 



" But when we consider the magnitude of the convulsion 

 which this mighty railway delusion will effect; the thousands 

 of human beings thrown out of employ; the incalculable 

 diminution in the number of horses, and the consequent 

 deficiency in demand for agricultural produce — not to men- 



