A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTEE. 

 War Tike and After. 



Iti is hardly necessary to explain how thoroughly hiuiting 

 was upset' by the Great War, for the fact is wedl within 

 the knowledge of all hunting people. The marvellous thing^ 

 about it is that the killing of foxes by hounds — much of it 

 could hardly be called sport — was carried on through four 

 dreary seasons, and practically nothing was heard about it 

 except in its own immediate locality. Just at first the most 

 noticeable thing was a falling off in the size of the fields, 

 which took place everywhere. All soldiers, both regular and 

 territorial, at once took their departure, and very soon all 

 young civilians disappeared, the riding element in the country 

 quickly joining up, so quickly indeed that some who had never 

 served before were actually killed in France before the war 

 was two months old. As the months progressed the fields grew 

 smaller and smaller. Many hunting folks of both sexes 

 decided that they would not hunt in war time. Many took 

 on war work of various kinds, while great numbers who were 

 well advanced in years rejoined some branch of the service 

 which they had left nearly half a lifetime ago. " White- 

 headed veterans and girls still in their teens form my present 

 field," said th.e master of a well-known pack when the war was 

 little more than a year old, but worse things to hunting were 

 still to come, viz., the conscription, which cleared off all the 

 younger hunt servants, grooms, and gamekeepers who Jiad 

 not already joined up (great, numbers of all these classes were 

 already serving, but of course there were some left). Then 

 came the destroying of half of every pack in the kingdom., the 

 difficulty in procuring horses for the hunt servants, and the 

 tremendous rise in prices, which caused the maintenance of a. 



