The Sport of Our (Ancestors 



bag foxes, and in the Devonshire of 1826 the practice grew 

 up of saving the Fox aHve in front of the Hounds — though 

 how this desperate deed was done is not recorded — and 

 keeping him on a long chain in a yard, to be there exercised 

 by a groom with a driving whip until he was wanted for the 

 next day's hunting. We always thought that the old Devon- 

 shire men like Sir Walter Carew and Parson Russell were 

 sportsmen of the most conservative and orthodox type. 

 How their consciences yielded to treatment to the extent 

 of allowing them to hunt foxes from a bag is difficult to 

 imagine. As an amusement for officers in India, who liter- 

 ally cannot get a gallop in any other way, or as part of the 

 amenities of a French health resort within reach of the 

 Pyrenees, the thing is intelligible. If it becomes the fashion 

 in England, the curtain will have been rung down upon the 

 Sport of our Ancestors. 



THE NOBLE EARL OF AN ANCIENT NAME 



A noble Earl of an ancient name 



Hunted the Fox, but preferred him tame, 



Though his sire was as bold a sportsman free 



As ever rode over a grass * countree.' 



His sire would mount on his high-bred horse 



And view the wild Fox from the hillside gorse, 



But his son would come down by a second-class train, 



Worry a bagman, and^ — go home again ! 



240 



