4-0 THE SPORT OF KINGS 



two hours he lay close, within a few hundred, a 

 very few hundred yards of a large crowd of horse- 

 men, who were smoking, lunching, and chatting, 

 and otherwise making a noise. When he was 

 ready, and not till then, he roused himself from 

 his lair, but once he made a start he made the best 

 use of his time, and being well halloaed at he kept 

 travelling. 



In one other particular I must advise my fox- 

 hunting friends to forget their fox-hunting ex- 

 periences. Festina lente is a good motto for those 

 who ride with the Devon and Somerset, and a 

 masterly inactivity on occasion is the sure road to 

 ultimate triumph. If a man were to act on the 

 same lines as if he were riding to foxhounds, he 

 would find that his horse had put in a good day's 

 work before the real business of the day had begun, 

 with the result that he would find himself " left " at 

 the finish. For the wild red deer travel far and 

 fast, and there is not often a chance of a second 

 horse in a run. 



The best plan for a man to adopt is to select 

 some well-known native as his pilot, make up his 

 mind to always keep him in sight — no easy matter, 

 bien entendu^ if there should be a scent ; and then 

 if, when at the end of from ten to twenty miles 

 through some of the loveliest scenery in the United 

 Kingdom, he is not satisfied that he has been more 

 than repaid for his trouble, his case must be put 

 down as a hopeless one. And one thing is certain, 

 if he does appreciate what he sees, he will want to 

 have a repetition of it, and that at an early date. 



When Dr. Collyns wrote his charming book 

 stag-hunting in the West had sunk to a somewhat 

 low ebb. Poaching and deer -stealing had done 



