The New Festivals. 137 
seem impossible to get a hundred people together. 
But it happens to be one of the fixed points, 
‘so to say, in a wide hunting district, and is well 
known to every man who rides a horse within twenty 
miles. | 
Numerous parties come to the race-ground from 
the great houses of the neighbourhood. The labour- 
ing people flock there ex masse ; some farmers lend 
waggons and teams to the labourers that they may 
go. An additional—a personal—interest attaches to 
many of the races because the horses are local horses, 
and the riders known to the spectators. Some of 
these meetings are movable; they are held near one 
town one year and another the next, so as to travel 
round the whole hunting district—returning, say, the 
fourth year to the first place. Most of the market 
towns of any importance have their annual agricul- 
tural show now, which is well attended. 
In the spring comes the rook-shooting ; the date 
varies a week or so according to the season, whether 
it has been mild and favourable or hard and late. 
This still remains a favourite occasion for a party. 
Sheep-shearing in sheep districts, as the Downs, is. 
also remembered ; some of the old folk make much 
of it; but as a general rule this ancient festival has 
fallen a good deal into disuse. It is not made the 
grand feast it once was for master and man alike—at 
least, not in these parts. With the change that has 
come across agriculture at large a variation has taken 
