MEN AND MANNERS. 49 



crane as loni^ as you liked, and make np all the lost 

 ground again by as many minutes' hard galloping. 

 Already — at least in such a strip of ground as that 

 beneath Wartnaby, with its many gullies and old thorn 

 tree hedges — it is quite enough to get behind once, to 

 ensure your maintaining a position in the rearguard for 

 the rest of the journey. 



The later arrivals at jMelton, by the way, since Kirby 

 Gate, are Capt. Smith, ]\lr. J. Behrens, Mr. Gerald Paget, 

 Mr, Q. D. Hume, and Mr. G. Lambton. 



The frost of ]\Ionday repeated itself on Tuesday, and 

 established itself on AVednesday to a degree that, though 

 it did not quite prohibit hunting, put both Coles Lodge 

 with the Cottesmore and Waltham with the Belvoir in a 

 far colder and less attractive light than either the merits 

 of the fixtures or the time of year deserve. 



On Wednesday indeed the farmers could " cart man- 

 gold " without their waggon wheels making any impres- 

 sion on the soil — hardly the consistency we wish Mother 

 Earth to have attained when our turn comes for sub- 

 mitting our feeble frames to her kindly embrace. 



One small paragraph I may be allowed to interpolate 

 — not to record a matter of history, but as a humble 

 plea in the interest of us all. Gratuitously maybe, and 

 certainly with no authority beyond that of a sense of 

 pressing necessity, I would implore fellow-sportsmen who 

 hunt in the Shires — where the evil is more pronounced 

 because many times multiplied — to pay more, ten times 

 more, attention to the farmers' property than they have 

 ever been accustomed, or taught, to do ; and esi^ecialJy 



