CHAPTER XXVI 



HOW NOT TO DO IT 



Not the least of the difficulties with which fox- 

 hunting has to contend in these latter days is the 

 eagerness with which some men rush into print in 

 order to make suggestions about a sport of which 

 they have little or no practical knowledge. I have 

 already pointed out that the keenest critics of 

 Masters and huntsmen are those whose ignorance 

 is generally pronounced, and so, pari passu, is it 

 the case with the man who poses as the reformer 

 of hunting practice, and who seeks to set up a 

 code of hard-and-fast rules to govern a sport of 

 the inner life of which he knows little or nothing. 

 And it may be remarked that a man may have 

 hunted regularly, he may indeed have hunted for 

 many years, yet be in the most absolute ignorance 

 of a great deal which appertains to what is, after 

 all, the king of field sports. And the very fact 

 that there is underlying the would-be reformer's 

 unpractical schemes a certain substratum of abstract 

 right renders his interference all the more harmful. 

 It may be laid down as an axiom that every 

 man who hunts regularly should subscribe to one 

 or more packs of hounds, according to circum- 

 stances ; and it is well known that there are many 

 men who contrive to evade subscribing to any 



