CUB-HUXTIXG. 291 



not interesting, we mean, in the literary sense — still, in a 

 woodland country like North Staffordshire, the cubbins; 

 department ought not to be passed over altogether in 

 silence. No one who knows anything practically of fox- 

 hunting requires to be told that cub-hunting is not only a 

 pleasant, but a most useful and necessary, prelude to the 

 arduous work of the regular season ; but the proportion 

 of sportsmen who are willing to get up at five or six 

 o'clock on a September morning and spend four hours in 

 galloping up and do^^Ti woodland rides to the music of the 

 horn and the huntsman's " Tally-ho back," is not large 

 compared with the roll of members of any Hunt, and it is 

 scarcely possible to construct a narrative of any morning's 

 sport in the cubbing season which will be of the slightest 

 interest to the general reader. Nevertheless, the cub- 

 hunting time is of the greatest importance to any Hunt, 

 and without it neither hounds, horses, nor foxes could be 

 said to have received a proper education. As the good 

 preparatory school is to Eton or Harrow, so is the discipline 

 of cub-hunting to the serious work of the regular season ; 

 in short, as some one has said — we are not sure who or where 

 — " a pack is made or marred in cub-hunting." Young 

 hounds then learn " what's what," horses find out how to 

 negotiate blind ditches, and young foxes discover what it 

 is to have forty or fifty hungry and speedy foes behind 

 them, and soon learn the inevitable lesson that if they 

 wish to live a little longer they must harden their hearts 

 and go ahead. 



Notwithstanding the impossibility of making an ex- 

 citing story out of a morning's cub-hunting, the writer 

 knows few thino-s more pleasant than an earlv mornins: ride 

 on one of those grand September mornings such as we 

 often have even in this fickle and much-abused climate of 

 ours — the air fresh and crisp : just a soupcon of autumn 

 tints, but barely a soupcon, in the oak woods we are 

 drawing ; the silken gossamer on bracken and grass ; the 

 full pack of hounds, young and old, in itself surely a sight 

 well worth getting up early to see ; the business-like 



