Country Life
is FOXIIUNTING DOOMED-?
Wherever a country house, in its technical sense, is found, or wherever sportsmen are collected together, it is odds that the future of hunting will be discussed. It has been my fortune to hear a succession of such discussions in several very different districts. Now hunting, that is to say, fox-hunting; has been singularly influential in the social and, indeed, economic life of many country places. The hunts spend an enormous sum of money on service, on the purchase and feeding of hounds and horses, and on various fonds, such as the poultry fund. They buy the best oats for their mounts and the best porridge for their hounds. For these and other less economic and more social reasons they have in the past been generally popular in country places. Farmers have hunted themselves and ridden quite happily over their own wheat and crashed without a qualm through their own fences. Both they and their labourers have regarded the fox as almost sacrosanct. Even men of letters have followed their lead. Our Poet Laureate himself has been praised as a second Surtees. Red coats add colour to the winter balls; and members of the hunt. on such social occasions are whippers-in of their own popularity.
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