The Sport of Our ^Ancestors 



to Tring together with the Earl and his Hounds and the whole 

 retinue. 



Now all this is extremely funny, and a hunt after a bag 

 fox may be forgiven if it is simply regarded as a stimulant to 

 the liver of a Cabinet Minister. But no one would dignify 

 such a pursuit with the name of Sport. To hunt any 

 animal whom you have had in your hand is not Sport. It 

 is an amusement, a pastime. Huntsmen will tell you that 

 to hunt even a wild Fox who has been bolted from an earth 

 or drain either at the beginning or at any other period of 

 a run gives them no thrill. It may give a lot of pleasure to 

 the ladies and gentlemen, but it is not Fox-hunting. If, 

 indeed, you mark a Fox to ground, and he escapes you when 

 you are trying to kill him, then the instinct of pursuit is 

 unbroken, and you hunt him with as great zest after he has 

 bolted as you did before. One morning there was a very 

 hard frost, and the master was induced to put his Hounds 

 into a wood to try to find and to kill an old Fox who was said 

 to have taken more chickens in one village than probably 

 existed in the whole of the county. The bitch pack was out. 

 They found at once and, after a fine cry twice or thrice 

 round the wood, marked him to ground in a drain one field 

 from the covert. * Now we will eat him and then go home,' 

 said the master, to the huge delight of the foot people who 

 had all seen the Fox, and of course could swear to him among 

 a thousand as being the terror of the hen-roosts. But the 

 sanguine master had reckoned without his Fox. The animal 

 had too much sense to stop in the drain, and took the only 

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