HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS '[67 



such a distance to secure au excellent day's hunt- 

 ing. To say nothing of her Majesty's staghounds, 

 there are first-rate packs in Surrey, Essex, and 

 Kent, all within a railway journey of an hour. 

 Here again the inveterate laud cf tor tem2:)oris adi 

 will declare he discerns greater ground for dis- 

 satisfaction than congratulation. He will tell you 

 that in consequence of those confounded steam- 

 engines the field gets flooded by cockneys who can't 

 ride, who mob the covert, and effectually prevent 

 the fox from breaking. Of course it is indisputable 

 that railways have familiarised men who never 

 hunted previously with horses and with hounds, and 

 that persons now venture upon the chase whose 

 forefathers may have scarcely known how to dis- 

 tinguish between a dog and a horse. Very likely, 

 moreover, it would be much better for fox-hunting 

 if a fair proportion of these new-comers had never 

 presented themselves in this their new capacity. 

 At the same time with the quantity of the horse- 

 men there has been some improvement also in 

 the quality of the horsemanship. Leech's typical 

 cockney Nimrod may not have yet become extinct, 

 but he is a much rarer specimen of sporting 

 humanity than was formerly the case. 



It is a great thing for all Englishmen that hunt- 

 ing should have received this new development 



