10 EXTENT OF HUNTING COUNTRIES 



once a week, it soon became famous for straight-running 

 foxes. Woodlands should never lie fallow ; they want 

 continually stirring and working, like clay land, to be 

 productive of good sport. 



From the increase of game-preserving, and the importa- 

 tion of French foxes, may be dated the scarcity of really 

 good runs ; instead of the long, lanky-looking animal of 

 the last century, ill fed, and often going supperless to his 

 kennel, which would run nearly from sunrise to sunset, 

 we find a thick, short, plethoric-looking little brute, as 

 sleek, as fat, and almost as sleepy as a dormouse, which, 

 on a good scenting day, is blown up in fifteen or twenty 

 minutes, having been in trouble after the first three fields ; 

 and when, by accident, or a check, he is enabled to hold 

 on for ten or twenty more, he is called a gallant old fox, 

 and the run he has afforded is immediately stuck into 

 Bell's Life, as something out of the common course. 



I met a gentleman a few days since (January, i860), 

 returning from hunting with the North Warwickshire 

 pack, and to my query as to sport he replied — *' We had 

 a grand meet, somewhat over two hundred horsemen, — 

 found in B. Wood, badgered and hammered him about 

 for some little time ; at last he went away over a few 

 fields, when I saw him cross the road and take refuge in 

 a pigsty, whence he was unceremoniously pulled out by 

 the hounds.*' This is the sort of every-day finale to what 

 are called fox-chases in the present era. A multiplicity 

 of hounds — ditto of red coats, trying to scream or mob a 

 fox to death before he is half awake — a helter-skelter 

 scurry for two or three miles, which finishes off the fat, 

 pursy animal ; and this is called a splendid thing ! Bah I 

 How many of these two or three hundred men in buckram 

 would be in at the death of a thorough good, straight- 



