THE PROVINCES 



There never was a greater fallacy. If we 

 calculate the number of hours hounds are out of 

 kennel (for we must remember that the Quorn 

 and Belvoir put two days into one), we shall find, 

 I think, that they run hard for fewer minutes, in 

 proportion, across the fashionable countries than 

 in apparently less-favoured districts concealed at 

 sundry out-of-the-way corners of the kingdom. 



Nor is this disparity difficult to understand. 

 Fox-hunting at its best is a wild sport ; the wilder 

 the better. Where coverts are many miles apart, 

 where the animal must travel for its food, where 

 agriculture is conducted on primitive principles 

 that do not necessitate the huntsman's horror, "a 

 man in every field," the fox retains all his savage 

 nature, and is prepared to run any distance, face 

 every obstacle, rather than succumb to his 

 relentless enemy, the hound. He has need, and 

 he seems to know it, of all his courage and all his 

 sagacity, as compelled to fight alone on his own 

 behalf, without assistance from that invaluable 

 ally, the crowd. 



A score of hard riders, nineteen of whom are 

 jealous, and the twentieth determined not to be 

 beat, forced on by a hundred comrades all eager 

 for the view and its stentorian proclamation, may 

 well save the life of any fox on earth, with scarce 

 an effort from the animal itself. But that hounds 

 are creatures of habit, and huntsmen in the flying 



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