288 DECEMBER. 



in a bag resting on the saddle. Out of it he holds up 

 his head with pricked ears and every ounce of zeal con 

 centrated on the pack. As Raleigh said well : &quot; The 

 nightingale would win no prize at a poultry show/ This 

 infinitely eager and plucky terrier is meant not for the 

 bench, but the earth. It is a miracle how hound and dog 

 desire a particular quarry. Two hounds from this pack 

 were sent some years ago to the Argentine to save the 

 stock from the puma and learnt their peculiar enemy over 

 there as these others have learnt theirs here. Foxhunters 

 and the hunters they mount, fox hounds, and fox terriers 

 are as closely specialised as a turnspit. 



And now they leave the spacious drive and lawns and 

 vanish in long perspective down the avenue and into the 

 wood. Only remains a little girl in a perambulator, a 

 fox-hunter doll booted and spurred in one hand and 

 a horn in the other. What a scene it was ! and like no 

 other. As gay and rhythmic perhaps as any medieval 

 hunt, 



Where hunters gather, staghounds bay 

 Round some fair forest lodge at morn ; 



but with its own rough, English, homely naturalness. 

 It might have been compounded for the sake of its own 

 picturesqueness. The holiday walkers start with them ; 

 and two at least, clad in running shorts and looking 

 queedy athletic, may cling for a long time to the tail of 

 the chase, but the harvest of the few who remain in and 

 about the woods, after the hunt has vanished, has yet 

 to come* The avenue that leads from house to wood is 

 of old Spanish chestnuts. The fluted bark of each trunk 

 is twisted spirally from right to left about the base as if 

 the architect of the fluted pillars of the Lonha at Palma 

 had been exercising his art. The pale leaves lying on 



