6 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



does one see a similar display of eager, restless activity all round. 

 The mighty rush of squadrons, where every horseman strives for a 

 lead, apparently reckless of what may befall himself or anything 

 that comes in his way, would seem the very ecstasy of madness to 

 one who had never played a part in such stirring scenes. Steeple- 

 chasing, some critics say it is, but perhaps they are moved to 

 envy by the thought that they can no longer hold their own with 

 the boldest. He must be cold, indeed, whose blood is not stirred 

 to rapture, or who can stop to criticize when Tom Firr, with clear, 

 shrill blasts of the horn that Quornites know so well, is getting 

 his hounds out of Cream Gorse on the line of a Fox whose neck is 

 set straight for the glorious vale of Twyford, or the Cottesmore 

 are streaming like a torrent in foam down the slopes from famed 

 ■Ranksboro' Gorse, or Pytchley men are charging the bullfinches 

 that raise their thorny network across the vale between Lilbourne 

 and Crick, or the Belvoir tans are racing over the Lings' from 

 Freeby Wood to Croxton Park. Mere memory of such a moment 

 makes the face of an old Meltonian flush and his nerves tingle 

 with excitement. Call it wild helter-skelter confusion, fit only for 

 boys or savages to take part in ; say that it is more like the 

 tumult of a barbaric fantasia than sport for civilized beings ; hurl 

 what epithets you will at it ! But who that has once been in such 

 a burst would not give a cycle of Cathay for those brief, rapture- 

 laden twenty minutes over the beautiful grass lands of the shires ? 

 Think of the throb of pulses, as a Fox breaks cover ; the beating 

 of your heart while you wait in breathless excitement for him to 

 cross the first field ; the "Tally ho ! gone away!" ringing like a 

 trumpet call, and then the answering chorus of hounds, at sound 

 of which, like a cavalry regiment in full charge, two hundred 



