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country where you can spare a fox, and 

 where you can, without much trouble dig 

 him, give him to the hounds on the earth, 

 and go home. But whatever you do never 

 turn out a bag-man ; it is injurious to your 

 hounds, makes them wild and unsteady ; be- 

 sides, nothing is more despicable, or held in 

 greater contempt by real sportsmen than the 

 practice of hunting bag-foxes. It encourages 

 a set of rascals to steal from other hunts ; 

 therefore keep in mind, " if there were no 

 receivers there would be no thieves." What 

 chiefly contributes to make fox-hunting so 

 very far superior to other sports, is the 

 wildness of the animal you hunt, and the 

 difficulty in catching him. It is rather ex- 

 traordinary, but nevertheless a well known 

 fact, that a pack of hounds, which are in 

 sport and blood, will not eat a bag-man. I 

 remember hearing an anecdote (when I was 

 in Shropshire many years ago), of the late 

 Lord Stamford's hounds, which I will relate 



