Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes (Volume 24) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...by their forms on the flags, without reference to their tongues and powers of music? Say what you like, my dear hunting friends, but the tendency of the day is in this direction. The causes are many--a silent huntsman makes a silent pack, and the first desideratum of pace in hounds leads to semi-muteness, too often indeed to entire silence. This may be all very well in a flying country, where everyone is bent on riding on their backs, and it is the foremost bits of pink and black that guide the rest of the field in the wake of the chase. What heed is there then of the cry of hounds? It is the thunder of the hoofs of the horses that dominates the chase, not the melody of true hound chase that we wantonly sing of in "John Peel" and other old hunting melodies; and in the Shires I suppose we must bow to the inevitable. Yet are there not thousands--aye, many a thousand--who cannot huntvin these shires, in fact, who prefer not to do so, and to these is not hound music and a huntsman's ringing cheer as essential to their pleasure and as needful in the intricacies of a run as can possibly be? In many of these countries, alas the new fashion has upset the old one. The highest-bred hounds, the most silent of systems, the almost entire want of hunting sounds, with their necessary accompaniments of twisting foxes and scattered fields, mere follow-myleaders most of them, and rank disappointment on the return home. There used to be a good story told of one of the old lords of Berkeley, who was a keen sportsman but suffered from deafness, and it was only by his thorough knowledge of country that he managed to enjoy the sport. He always had an attendant, nicknamed his "hearer." The following colloquy very often happened, " Do ye...