104 PINK AND SCARLET 



— Is it light, medium, or deep and holding, and 

 does it favour ricochet or the reverse ? have the 

 fields headlands along which we can ride and so 

 save our horse ? 



Is the road a first or a second-class one ? what is 

 its state of repair, and is there any material for 

 repair available locally ? 



In what formations could the various arms move 

 along it ? and would the strip of grass at the side, 

 along which we ride in such comfort, be wide 

 enough for a " shunting place " ? 



What are the crops ? and do we know the different 

 sorts when we see them at this time of year ? This 

 is a thing that every man who hunts should make 

 it his business to know, indeed no man should be 

 allowed to hunt unless he knows any kind of corn 

 crop, beans, seeds, young grass, and roots, when he 

 sees them. The last mentioned few can mistake, 

 the last but one is comparatively easy to tell by its 

 new-sown and fragile look. The general appearance 

 of the others will be seen by looking at Plate XVI, 



Perhaps of all crops, seeds (Fig. 2) is the least 

 generally known, and the uninitiated usually regard 

 it as merely a stubble field, seeing only the old 

 stubble, and missing the delicate, close-to-the-ground- 

 growing clover leaves underneath. Thus seeds 

 come to be ridden over unknowingly, and yet few 

 crops are, with certain conditions of soil and weather, 

 more liable to svSi^x permanent damage. 



Unless hounds are running really fast all crops 

 should be avoided if possible, and when they are 



