3i OBSERVATIONS OX FOX-HUNTING 



foxes will be very shy. Where there are many 

 earths they will lay at ground. There can be 

 no doubt but it must be more agreeable to hvuit 

 a good covuitry always, if you have extent enough 

 for an open season. Provided you cannot hunt 

 the inferior one, so as to give satisfaction, it is 

 more liberal to give it up altogether to some 

 neighbouring pack, or even to some one from a 

 distance, who might be glad to hvuit it regularly. 

 The keeping a country, and requiring owners of 

 coverts to preserve, without hunting it, is too 

 much to expect, and gives people an opportunity 

 of alluding to the story of the Dog in the Manger. 

 And for another reason, although farmers are 

 liberal, they think it hardly fair play, if they rent 

 a farm in the best part of the hunt for sport, 

 to have their land rode over constantly, whilst 

 in the other less favourable part the hounds never 

 meet. Their conversation at the market dinner, 

 over a bottle, is often upon this subject ; whereas 

 if you do but hunt the whole country impartially, 

 there can be no cause for complaint. 



It is a very common case for a master of 

 hounds to be requested to draw such and such a 

 covert, merely because it may happen to accom- 

 modate some of the gentlemen out, by lying on 

 their way home ; now, if an acquiescence in this 

 should cause no inconvenience or material altera- 



