ioo SPORTS AND ANECDOTES. 



good look-out for their master's requirements, they 

 are very often a great nuisance to farmers and 

 occupiers of land ; for when their masters are out of 

 sight they become somewhat unruly, and do incalcul- 

 able damage by the reckless way in which they ride 

 over the cropping, swinging gates off their hinges, 

 and leaving gates open everywhere in their route, 

 and letting the farmers' stock out of their proper 

 quarters. They seem utterly regardless of the 

 damage they are doing, and the annoyance and 

 inconvenience they are causing to tenants, whenever 

 they honour their farms with a visit. 



Farmers themselves, as a body, are glad to see 

 the hounds crossing their fields ; but they do not 

 much care to see a lot of servants, second horse- 

 men, riding all over the fields, instead of keeping 

 on the roads, which is their proper place. This 

 nuisance, for it is nothing else, is more felt in a 

 woodland country than it is in Leicestershire, or in 

 a grass country, from the fact that a fox must go 

 away somewhere, and cannot hang about and take 

 his time from wood to wood, which entails a great 

 deal of riding across fields, by those who constitute 

 the nuisance I am speaking of. 



I should not have written so much upon the 



