140 THE BEST SEASON OX EECOKD. 



a wild, but almost level, upland district — spreading for 

 many miles in poor and often self-sown grass, that 

 carries a scent under almost any conditions of wind and 

 weather. (They went over much of it, about three 

 weeks since, in their great and lengthy run from Bunney 

 Park.) Other merits possessed by this unfomiliar region 

 are that it is slenderly inhabited, that it owns and 

 requires very little draining, riding wet and sound 

 throughout the winter, and that its hedges are just what 

 you would pick out as schooling-material for a very 

 third-rate or untaught horse. Indeed, I am inclined to 

 think that — taking into consideration the further fact 

 that the ditches are never cleared of briars and grass — 

 an indifferent hunter, well cautioned with whip and spur 

 for each fresh effort, is really a safer conveyance over 

 such trlwcs than a bold flighty horse that would toy with 

 an oxer. At least, if such is not the case (paradoxical 

 as the theory may seem), Monday showed that much 

 money has been spent in vain, and that even a couple of 

 hundred (paid, too, on the nail) will not always keep a 

 liorse on his legs. So much for the country over which 

 we now disported for some forty and odd minutes. Our 

 fox went well and far when once lairly started on his 

 way. But foxes see, and perhaps imagine, as many 

 dangers besetting their path as we find In ours — their 

 objects of dread being man and beast, ours the mere 

 frail creation of carpenter, hedge-cutter, and over-fed 

 i'ancy. In his first curious turn hounds ran over, and 

 snapped up, another fox nestled in a iallow ; but after 

 leaving Mr. Cradock's S})inney they held Ibrward in a 



