NOT A HUNTING COUNTRY 265 



well. I have known him for thirty -five years. 

 He is the biggest fox " wot ever wos." 



It is plain enough to any one who can read 

 between the lines that, unfortunately, the Master 

 of Hounds in question has to deal with a district 

 in which foxes are not preserved as they should be, 

 and that he knows it. Mind, I do not suggest 

 that the writer is guilty of vulpicide ; he appears 

 to have a grievance, first against hounds for hunt- 

 ing the country at all, and secondly, against the 

 Master for the way in which it is hunted. I have 

 said it before, and I reiterate the statement, I can 

 prove it amply if necessary, that the best estates 

 for game that I know — and I have a pretty wide 

 knowledge of shooting estates — are where foxes 

 are well preserved, and where the shooting is 

 never allowed to interfere with the hunting. I 

 can name them in one county after another, 

 estates where big bags are made, and where the 

 head of game is quite as much as the ground will 

 legitimately carry. So, if our shooting friends 

 get keepers such as are to be found on the estates 

 I mention, their grievance, I take it, would vanish. 



Now from the particular I must pass on to the 

 general. 



A long list of conditions, more or less imagin- 

 ary, are given under which it is told it is very 

 much a question whether shooting should be arbi- 

 trarily sacrificed to another sport. The country is 

 unknown to me in which shooting is arbitrarily 

 sacrificed to fox-hunting. 



Unfortunately, many countries are well known 

 to me where fox-hunting is unnecessarily interfered 

 with by the arbitrary conditions imposed by the 

 shooting tenant and his keepers. And now to 



