AN INVITATION 271 



were the forerunners of those " invitation " days 

 which are frequently occurring in the present 

 generation, and which are a source of much 

 anxiety to Masters of Hounds and hunt servants. 



When hunting became established all over the 

 country on a firm basis, when subscription packs 

 were formed and hunt clubs became the order of 

 the day in the provinces as well as in more fashion- 

 able districts, Mr. Jones and Mr. Johnson and Mr. 

 Smith, with their respective Towlers, of course, 

 became things of the past. But old customs 

 die hard at any time, and more especially was 

 this the case in the beginning of the century. 

 Then it must be remembered that the boundaries 

 of countries were ill-defined ; there was a great 

 difficulty in getting to the outlying districts of a 

 hunt, expense was a matter for consideration of 

 the most careful kind, and, as a consequence, there 

 survived in many districts a few scratch packs of 

 hounds which hunted occasionally, and which 

 belonged to some wealthier yeoman or farmer who 

 resided far from the centre of any of the newly- 

 formed hunts. They gradually were done away 

 with, as the countries adjacent were better and 

 more regularly hunted, and when fox-preserving 

 and the regular drawing of a country became 

 better understood. But until that took place they 

 were not only tolerated, but appreciated by their 

 more orthodox neighbours, with whom they were 

 generally on the best of terms. 



So we read in the diary of Mr. John Andrew, 

 the first Master of the Cleveland, that in 1 8 1 7 the 

 pack joined forces with Rickaby, of Swainby, by 

 invitation, to hunt some of the country which lay 

 on the borders of the Cleveland. " We took nine 



