208 STAG-H UN TING 



CHAPTER II 



IN FRANCE 



THE preceding pages will have given some idea of 

 what stag-hunting was in the Middle Ages. It is plain 

 that its votaries in those days trusted more to the 

 woodcraft of the harbourers and the prickers, and to 

 the special training of the lymers, than they did to 

 the science of the man who acted as huntsman, or 

 to the nose, pace, and condition of his pack. And 

 though of course there is less pedantry and formality 

 about it now, yet stag-hunting in modern France, 

 differing therein from ours, appears to be conducted 

 on the same principles in the nineteenth as it was in 

 the fourteenth century. And this continuity of practice 

 must be my excuse for giving here some account of 

 the sport as it exists at the present day across the 

 Channel, instead of proceeding at once to describe 

 that which is more familiar, if only by name, to 

 English sportsmen. 



Wheresoever a few men of our blood are gathered 



