232 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



with more oonfidenoe in the pre-wire days,and well do I remem- 

 ber the consteamatiou which the advent of barbed wire caused. 

 Luckily, the first strands put up, when I became acquainted 

 with the evil, were new, very bright, and easily seen, but the 

 particular line of wire I have in mind was half a mile long, 

 forming one boundary of a farm, and it remains there to this 

 day. This particular wire was, I have always understood, put 

 up by a non-resident landlord who had promised new boundary 

 fences to a fresh tenant of a somewhat neglected farm, but 

 the new wire cut the usual line of hounds between two small 

 coverts, not more than a mile apart, and ever since the 

 " field " has had to use the gates, which involves a consider- 

 able detour. Indeed^ I can go further than this, for I know 

 of places which are permanently closed to riders owing to wire, 

 and which, when hounds follow a fox through them, compel 

 the huntsman and all riders to go about half a mile round. 

 This is what is known as a " birdcage," and doubtless there are 

 in these days numbers of other " birdcages " in various parts 

 of the country. Personally, I can without much trouble think 

 of at least a dozen accidents due to wire, and I have seen 

 hounds badly torn by it on several occasions. Once, indeed, 

 I saw a southern pack with a fox close in front of them charge 

 a fence formed of four strands of barbed wire with a plain 

 double wire on the top, and at least half a dozen couples were 

 badly torn. I have seen, too, more than once, a single strand 

 of wire about a foot above the ground, and four feet or so out 

 from a thick fence, and entirely hidden from the view of those 

 on the far side. One such place I have in mind, and as soo)> 

 as it was known of — early in the cubbing syste^m — a man was 

 sent there with a couple of danger posts. These he put up 

 far too low in the fence, and the first time hounds crossed the 

 field two horses jumped into the wire, one of them being ven- 

 badly cut. I do not think these traps are very common, and 

 I have heard of more than one which was removed when the 

 holder of the land came to know what had taken place; but 

 they are one of the conditions of present-day hunting, and 

 must therefore be mentioned. 



And anyhow, the broad fact remains that wire is enormously 

 used, both as new fencing and to mend gaps in old fences, and 

 that although in pre-war days a great deal of this was taken 



