OTTER-HUNTING. 321 



some consideration, or he would never have made Yenator 

 about to attend a meet for his destruction. That our forefathers 

 enjoyed chasing him is evident, and, reading between the lines, 

 it is perhaps as easy to account for the sport having gone out of 

 fashion. One great cause was, no doubt, that, with increased 

 civilization, rivers and brooks were laid open to the rod, which, 

 when forest abounded, could scarcely have been fished save by 

 netting or wiring ; and, consequently, more men took to the 

 gentle craft for mere sport's sake, and demanded the otter's 

 destruction by any and every means they could command. 

 The same cause introduced a change in the style of riding to- 

 hounds, and the kinds of chase which were not calculated to 

 bring forth the powers of the horse and the courage of the rider 

 were gradually less esteemed than heretofore. From this reason 

 we came to care less about the hound-music, which in old 

 days was set so much store by, and, instead of men asking whether 

 a hound's voice was a bass or a counter-tenor, the first question 

 became. Can he go the pace ? These gradual changes have sent 

 otter-hunting out of fashion, and for many years the sport was 

 almost dead ; even now the only pack of otter-hounds in the 

 United Kingdom, whose fixtures are published, is the Carlisle. 

 Still the sport has been kept alive by a few earnest votaries of 

 the chase, who could never bear to lay by the horn, winter or 

 summer — such, for instance, as the Eev. John Russell, who, it is 

 said, walked at least three thousand miles, when he was a 

 curate, before he found a single otter, and then, having got hold 

 of a hound called Racer, who would hit on the drag, ran up his 

 score of kills with a rapidity that must have gone far to erase his 

 previous disappointment. The Hon. Geoffrey, now Lord Hill, has, 

 or at any rate had, a very capital pack of hounds, with which he 

 hunted in Wales and the neighbouring counties, and has even 

 come as far as Oxford, where, one spring, not many years ago, 

 he had very fair spott indeed. Moreover, he has been to Ireland 

 with his hounds ; Wales, Devonshire, where they have never 

 been without otters, or hounds to hunt them, and the Border 



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