CHAPTER LX 



THE FUTURE OF FOX-HUNTING 



Perish the thought, may the day never come 

 When the gorse is uprooted, the foxhound is dumb. 



The pessimist says that for fox-hunting there is no 

 future, that fox-hunting is doomed, and that in a 

 few years the horn of the hunter will no longer 

 be heard in the land. Foxes, says he, are scarcer 

 than ever, over- preservation of game is more 

 rife than ever, and if hunting is to continue 

 it will be the hunting of the carted deer or 

 the strong-smelling but unsatisfactory red herring. 

 This, I take it, is about tantamount to saying 

 that hunting as it has been known in these islands 

 for upwards of a couple of centuries will cease 

 to exist. 



Now I am not a pessimist ; I do not in my 

 heart of hearts think that hunting is on its last 

 legs. I think it will last my time, and very much 

 longer, and I hope that a hundred years hence 

 Barkby Holt and John o' Gaunt's, Askham Bog 

 and Court House Spring, Bilbrough Gorse and 

 Rougemont Carr will echo the merry notes of horn 

 and hound as they do now. 



But the pessimist is often a man who has a 

 shrewd idea of how things are tending, and the 



