PREFACE. 



A FTER two years of no small labour, I have 

 redeemed the promise I made of writing a 

 companion work to The Post and the Paddock. In 

 the racing portion of it, my way was clear enough ; 

 but the hunting was fraught with difficulty. It struck 

 me, however, that there was one mode of treating the 

 subject which I might legitimately pursue without 

 exposing myself to the charge of plagiarism, or pro- 

 voking a fatal comparison with those regular hunting 

 writers, who have learnt their experience in the 

 saddle. In many of the capital books which have 

 appeared on the subject, horses and their riders seem 

 to have monopolized the lion's share of notice, to the 

 exclusion of the hounds. I felt sure that there must 

 be not a few stories of the exploits and breeding of 

 the latter, which had been told often enough over 



