Various

“ The bold onward style and cunning of the fox wanted something with more dash than was required for the short-running deer, or the hare always wanting to retrace her own foil. The fox taught that exquisite forward cast that almost sums up the pleasure of hunting; and the faster hounds will throw themselves on a line that is always well ahead of them, the more exhilarating is the sport. ”

“ All alike are happy as the days come and go and the summer wears on. Not the least enjoyable time is the late evening, when the wherries and yachts are moored for the night and the canvas camps are lit up. The solemn quietude of Broadland reigns on all sides, and than Broadland at night, can anything be more quiet, more peaceful, more soothing? The distant barking of a dog, the sound of song or music floating on the air from some craft, the splash of oars as a belated boating party passes by on the smooth surface of the stream, the flop! ”

“ In the last field, a grass one, when this gallant fox knew the end had come, he turned round and met the pack with his hackles up, and made the best fight he could, a game old warrior, indeed. With gleaming ivories shining defiantly, he died facing the foe, his teeth meeting in a death-grip directly the leading hound seized him. So good a fox was honoured with full funeral rites, all wanting a bit of him, and the Master would not have been half sorry if he had just managed to beat them at the finish. ”

“ But to make a rider into a first-class man, to make him acquainted with the power of the leg, to teach him how absolutely essential it is, and how the automatic and non-fatiguing use of it alone makes the “strong” rider, and is half the battle in keeping to hounds, check-mating refusers, ensuring a perfect bridling of the horse and getting the uttermost jump out of him at a fence, then let him finish his education, which, by the way, never is finished, by riding a well-bred slug for a whole season on the top of hounds. ”

“ In these days it seems dangerous to write or talk about the thoroughbred horse. There are some to whom the very name is anathema, associated in their minds only with short distance racing and the routine of Turf life. To them a thoroughbred horse is full of every equine imperfection—light in bone, faulty in conformation, weak in constitution. Others, again, see in the thoroughbred nothing but good. We have, say they, as good horses as ever we had, and better, and they are as extravagant in their optimism as their opponents are in their pessimism. ”

“ Sometimes not a fin could be stirred for hours, so that one had plenty of leisure to note the exceptional beauty of the budding woods, and to listen to all the love-notes of the birds. When sport is lively all these things are only dimly felt, as heightening enjoyment. When trout are sulky, then we feel the difference between the silence and comparative gloom of late summer woods, and the joyous choruses of early spring ”

“ Inseparable from all is angling. And what a variety of anglers one meets with on the Broads! They fish from wherries, from yachts, from boats, from the bank, and, indeed, from any and every point of vantage. They use all sorts of tackling, from the boy’s polished ash-wood rod and ready furnished line—evidently purchased merely for the holiday and the fun of the thing—to the perfectly tapered roach pole and line of gossamer fineness, greatly prized tackling handled by an expert, who means fishing in all seriousness. ”

“ Those who are acquainted with the bird-life of our islands need not be told that the deep-toned, booming cry of the last of the bitterns was heard a very long while ago. Marshes have been drained and rough lands cleared, cornfields and rich pastures cover the earth which once swayed and rustled with bulrushes and tasselled reeds, and the birds and flowers—the aborigines of the marshlands—have been driven away from their old haunts. ”

“ The Cottesmore ran from Luffenham, though in the first place a hunt for the lover hounds, was not without interest for the riding man, since the line lay over that wild and delightful tract of the Cottesmore country which lies round Wing and Manton. From field to field hounds hunted, always working forward, always on the line, ever drawing nearer to their fox. If the fox regulates his pace, as I believe he does, by the strength of the chorus behind him, this fox could have had but little rest, as the sustained roar of the pack told him that they were relentlessly pursuing. ”

“ You take your live bait, either on float-tackle or on a paternoster, and you drop it right in front of his nose; and he is a very sulky pike indeed who allows it to pass him by without a protest. If you are spinning you may cover acres of water and never have the luck to get near enough to him to attract his attention, but in winter the conditions are altogether different. Cold and hunger have driven him out of his summer fastnesses. He is roaming hither and thither in search of food. Every faculty is on the alert, and woe betide the hapless creature that comes within the range of his vision. ”

“ The recent invasion of England by the all-conquering New Zealanders—who established the wonderful record of thirty-one victories out of thirty-two matches played—has arrested the attention of a great many people who hitherto have taken little or no interest in Rugby football. The game as played by these men from over the sea was Rugby football in its most attractive form, and those who were privileged to see their victories over Middlesex or Blackheath, could not fail to be delighted with their skill, nor could they possibly deny the fascinating charm of the game when properly played. ”

“ So closely do hinds resemble the heather in its winter brown, that it is not easy to see them. At last we obtain a glimpse of one as she comes stepping high over the heather with a free, easy and proud step. There is nothing more beautiful than the action of a hind; it is far more graceful than the lumbering lollop of a fat old stag with his mighty weight of body and antlers. The way she goes leads to a covert on the side of a hill, and we make for this point, arriving there before she does. This is one of those cases in which you cannot ride to hounds—there is a bit of impossible ground. ”

“ Even when we take the purely commercial side of racing, in which the sole object is to bring off a betting coup, we see no reason why the jockey should be made a party to the pecuniary gains. It is, of course, the common custom to make him a party by putting him on so much to win. But why? Surely, looked at dispassionately, five guineas is a very nice reward for riding a race. The question of trying or not trying is, of course, quite outside the question. The jockey who does not try when he is being paid to do so is a thief, pure and simple. ”

“ When a boy goes to his Public School for the first time, he is overawed by the mass of customs and unwritten laws which insist upon his doing one thing and forbid him to do another. Although some of them may strike him as absurd, being merely survivals of a practice of which the use no longer exists, he will come to learn that the life of a school is bound up in its traditions, and will cherish them accordingly. He will first discover that the home estimate and school estimate of his capacities are very different, that he is, in fact, a nonentity. ”

“ The fox saved his life here, as the covert was full of foxes.
The North Cotswold bitches are giving their master a brilliant season to finish with. Nor can we imagine a greater pleasure to any one than to see a pack one has built up one’s self gaining triumph after triumph. I cannot help thinking that the fact that this pack kill their foxes is one reason for their success.
Hounds that are successful become so full of confidence in their huntsman and in themselves, that they make light of difficulties that would daunt others. ”

“ We long to dwell on the Atherstone, the Meynell, the Oakley, the Grafton, Lord Harrington’s, Lord Galway’s, and the Rufford, did our space permit, but are not their stories all faithfully and succinctly told there?
Cheshire stands out well, and the old Tarporley Hunt Club is a lasting tribute to the hunting instincts of that famed shire, where every other sport stands aside to make way for it. Shropshire also is its goodly neighbour, hunted as it is from end to end, right up into its Welsh border, in a style worthy of its best traditions ”

“ It might have seemed obvious that South African cricket “filliped” itself when its representatives swept the field in 1904, and one must bear in mind that the Australians—who, at all events, can always be depended upon to send their best—have met with more than one reverse when they have taken on a South African team. One might ask a good sportsman like Mr. Warner whether it is likely to give a fillip to a good shot to have to give the coup de grace to a wounded hare or to go through the dull routine of killing a low-flying pheasant? ”

“ Hounds are running in an inaccessible bottom, and we have to ride a path about two feet wide on the side of a hill, with tangled cover and brushwood. A branch bashes in one’s hat, another almost sweeps a rider out of the saddle; but the notes of the hounds coming up fitfully and always further on beckon us forward. The going may be bad, but we must get forward. What a relief to find one self on the open heather once more! The horse is not done yet, and we work our way back to hounds, which have a long start. ”

“ No better tribute to the scope of the runner’s usefulness could be put forth than the fact that he is running with us to-day. As might be expected, quite a little band of scarlet-coated runners live within easy reach of Melton and Oakham, a privileged area in which sport with one or other of the four Leicestershire packs may be seen on six days of the week. Theirs is a hard life at best, and were they not thoroughly endued with the spirit for sport, they could not for long follow their calling; but the runner of the rising generation has not the enthusiasm of a former generation. ”

“ The great points to be gained, though, from a racing career is that they can go fast enough to live with other horses, and that they have stood the exigencies of training to test constitution, temper, and the strain on limbs. The more proof of all this the better, as, to quote the late Lord Portsmouth’s views—and there was no greater judge—the best hunting sire has invariably been the racing slave; the horse that has commenced at two years old and run everywhere and often until he is six or seven. ”

“ Right up into the heart of the wooded hillside runs a lovely glen—in the foreground among its trim lawns, stands Saddell House; close by are the ruins of a grim old castle-keep, and one can trace the venerable avenue of stately beeches which leads to the ancient Abbey, where the old monks of Saddell enjoyed themselves six hundred years ago. ”

“ Of course his lordship does not propose that the Jockey Club should take the initiative, remembering, as he does, that when the anti-gamblers were last at work, betting at Newmarket was disavowed. The Club could not well ask to have that legalised which they claim does not exist. That the licensing of bookmakers is a desirable thing all sensible men will gladly admit. Racing would be all the better for it, but unless the trend of thought takes an entirely new channel, I cannot see any form of Government legalising gambling in the shape of wagering on horse-races. ”

“ The Earl of Yarborough has the proud distinction of being the owner of a pack that through eight generations has been handed down lineally as a private pack to the present day, and from 1714 its kennel book has been maintained carefully. It is, indeed, hard to say how much foxhunting owes to such splendid sportsmen as the Pelhams have been in their care and breeding of hounds. The Yarborough pages in this book are a revelation to sportsmen who appreciate what a landowner can do with 60,000 acres within a ring fence, and able to indulge to the full in hereditary tastes. ”

“ It matters not whether it is a rat swimming across to his hole on the opposite bank, a dab-chick aimlessly swimming about, a water-hen or a duckling, it is all the same to Master Pike. What more natural, therefore, that a well-spun bait drawn across his very eyes should in a moment rouse him to anger? ”

“ Thus there came to be established a standard of expectation, the public paying whatever charge the broker chose to exact, and the mining market became the happy hunting-ground of new recruits by the thousand, who perceived in it the opportunity of quickly getting rich. Short cuts of this kind, however, generally prove the long way round in the end. Brokers as a class cannot thrive by bleeding their clients white by excessive commissions and contangoes. Either they make losses, which wipe out their gains, and more, or they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. ”

“ We do not assert that a fish can see colour as we see it, but we hold that a fish can hardly be colour-blind when we consider the conditions under which it lives and moves. For the salmon to see its prey against the brightness of the sky is, as we have shown, exceptional, so that the argument which insists on the uselessness of colour to a creature which sees only dark silhouettes falls to the ground. We conclude that the salmon has a colour perception; whether the scale is like that of human beings we cannot say, but it is enough that the fish recognises one colour as different from another. ”

“ David Swinton dates back to the days when there were active pedestrians in the land, his keenness to see a hunt carrying him through a day’s fatigue such as the rising generation would never dream of. He thought nothing of going on foot ten or twelve miles to a fixture, and would “shog” home at hound pace with the pack at dusk, cutting corners when possible, but often arriving at his destination as soon as they did. Until three seasons ago, when in his seventy-sixth year, he often came out to get a sight of the sport he loved so well. ”

“ At the age of eight and a half or nine the bitterness of leaving home is very great, and those who have the misfortune to be sent to a big school at that tender age find the plunge very cold indeed. The preparatory is a sort of half-way house between home and the public school, and not only in the matter of work but in every department of school life it has the greatest influence. The intellect of the average boy, when first he goes to school, is frequently quite frozen, and it sometimes requires several weeks of untold patience and individual attention before the thaw sets in. ”

“ Whatever may once have been the case, and however the public, judging from the only available data, may have been induced to think the contrary, the Jockey Club, regarded as a purveyor of racing, is by no means indifferent to its patronage. Indications, mere straws blown by the prevailing wind though they be, are not lacking of a desire to ameliorate the public lot, and it has even been realised at last that visitors to Tattersall’s are civilised enough to appreciate the provision of something else to sit upon than the hard and dirty beams of which the stand is constructed. ”

“ I have seen so many young riders, and it is they alone who concern me, who have really had latent possibilities, but who, from an original faulty position in the saddle, and, alas, a deaf ear, have not made the progress they should. Still, if they do not listen to the counsels of wisdom, and yet aspire to go straight, they will find sitting astride on their saddle that hard-bitten dame, Experience. She rides with us all. She likes hunting—is seen to play polo, and is known to go racing. ”

“ We plunge into the recesses of deep woods, clatter up the beds of mountain torrents, climb up ascents so steep that one wonders the horse can ever face them, and come down hills which seem more fitted for sheep or goats than horses. All this you must do if you wish to see hounds at work. You may do your best, and yet lose the chase, to recover it again later on, or perhaps be left alone to find your way as best you can. ”

“ There is everything to charm one in the well-bred foxhound, and is there anything like him? The Peterborough Shows have done good in bringing the best-looking together, and in giving opportunities for seeing the best. There has been everything to prove that the best-looking are generally the greatest; they are so in nineteen cases out of twenty, and as they are picked for appearances as puppies, there should be nothing to offend the eye at all in any well-regulated pack. At Belvoir a moderate-looking one even cannot be seen. They are all beautiful hounds, and the difficulty is to find fault. ”

“ Perhaps the greatest disadvantage under which Rugby football labours is the fact that it is a winter pastime, and therefore often played in miserable weather. A greasy ball and slippery turf are sufficiently trying to the players; from a spectator’s point of view the game is entirely spoilt, whilst the accommodation provided for the onlookers is frequently most inadequate. At the best of times a covered stand is a cold and draughty place, but it is better than the open field; yet with Rugby clubs the covered stand is often conspicuous by its absence. ”