AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



These Reminiscences of a Huntsman are offered to the 

 Public, in the hope that, while they may afford amusement to 

 the Reader, whether sportsman or naturalist, they may at the 

 same time convey to the booted and spurred of the rising 

 generation a higher appreciation of the animals of their use or 

 abuse ; for in many kennels I have seen as much of the one as 

 of the other. 



Many men have really seemed to me to opine that a horse 

 was only made to be sat upon, jerked in the mouth and spurred, 

 whipped or driven, while hound and dog were locomotive 

 machines, unsusceptible of weariness, to be lashed when in fault, 

 and ridden after when in the right, and that neither the one 

 nor the other were susceptible, under better treatment, of 

 increased capabilities. In short, their owners seemed to fancy, 

 that, " like the walnut-tree, the more you beat them the better 

 they be ; " and that the duty of a huntsman lay in throwing 

 the hounds into cover, while that of a whipper-in was to give 

 a cut to every hound on road and field that came within the 

 reach of his long whip. There is an old saying, that " not one 

 horse in a thousand suits a single snaffle, and that not one man 

 in a million is fit to be entrusted with a curb." To that old 



