'^THE MERRY HARRIERS." 



Some readers will sympathize with me, and I 

 am afraid others will not, when I say that I 

 never felt quite comfortable out with '' the merry 

 harriers." The odds are all too heavy against 

 the hare. To run Master Jack or Miss Puss to 

 death may be — no doubt is — more merciful than 

 employing those hideous traps which keep their 

 victims in terror and torture for weary hours ; 

 but it seems to me that the one way to kill a 

 hare is to shoot him, in the head if possible, 

 when he is bowling along at fourteen miles an 

 hour. Those who are called ''lovers of the 

 leash " will not agree with this, and I know that 

 a good hare can often hold his own, by speed 

 and stratagem, against his long-tailed pursuers ; 

 but I repeat a hare never seems to me so well 

 killed as when you hit him clean in the head as 

 he is careering along at such speed that, his 

 limbs losing power, he turns over and over like 

 a sort of Catherine wheel, and falls motionless 

 and dead just at the moment when the well- 

 trained retriever has reached the spot to pick 



