unfair to think the sport especially dangerous on
account of the occasional accidents that happen. A man who is fond
of riding, but who sets a good deal of value, either for the sake of
himself, his family, or his business, upon his neck and limbs, can hunt
with much safety if he gets a quiet horse, a safe fencer, and does not
try to stay in the front rank. Most accidents occur to men on green or
wild horses, or else to those who keep in front only at the expense
of pumping their mounts; and a fall with a done-out beast is always
peculiarly disagreeable. Most falls, however, do no harm whatever to
either horse or rider, and after they have picked themselves up and
shaken themselves, the couple ought to be able to go on just as well as
ever. Of course a man who wishes to keep in the first flight must expect
to face a certain number of tumbles; but even he will probably not
be hurt at all, and he can avoid many a mishap by easing up his horse
whenever he can--that is, by always taking a gap when possible, going at
the lowest panel of every fence, and not calling on his animal for
all there is in him unless it cannot possibly be avoided. It must be
remembered that hard riding is a very different thing from good riding;
though a good rider to hounds must also at times ride hard.

Cross-country riding in the rough is not a difficult thing to learn;
always provided the would-be learner is gifted with or has acquired a
fairly stout heart, for a constitutionally timid person is out of place
in the hunting field. A really finished cross-country rider, a man who
combines hand and seat, heart and head, is of course rare; the standard
is too high for most of us to hope to reach. But it is comparatively
easy to acquire a light hand and a capacity to sit fairly well down in
the saddle; and when a man has once got these, he will find no especial
difficulty in following the hounds on a trained hunter.

Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as foolish to make a fetish of
it as it is to decry it. The fox is hunted merely because there is no
larger game to follow. As long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in
the land, and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, no one
could think of following the fox. It is pursued because the bigger
beasts of the chase have been killed out. In England it has reached its
present prominence only within two centuries; nobody followed the fox
while the stag and the boar were common. At the prese