DEVON AND SOMERSET. 5 



permission is due the introduction of a few of 

 the illustrations of the field in motion. While 

 the ancient canons of the sport are as far as 

 possible rigidly adhered to, the conditions of 

 modern staghunting are in many respects vastly 

 different to those under which IVlr. Bisset, of 

 famous memory, pursued his deer. 



For several years past a superabundant herd, 

 and the hard times experienced by the hill 

 country farmers, have made it a matter of 

 absolute necessity to take as many deer as 

 possible with hounds, in order to save them 

 and their companions from a much crueller fate, 

 so destructive are their ravages among the scanty 

 crops when urged by cold and hunger in the 

 long mid-winter nights. Similar causes have in 

 other times, and where there was no powerful 

 and wealthy organization to avert disaster, led 

 to the extermination of historic herds of red 

 deer, but the combined efforts of the original 

 pack and that of Sir John Heathcote Amory, 

 appear to be fully equal to the requirements of 

 the present time on Exmoor, supplemented, as 

 they will be, by an ancillary establishment upon the 

 Ouantocks and possibly by another at Barnstaple. 



A steady improvement m the type of horse 

 ridden by the visitors who flock to Exmoor in 

 the late summer and autumn makes the front 

 rank fuller from year to year, and where the 

 going is good and when scent is indifferent, it 



