Author: Thomas Smith

Publisher:

Published: 2015-08-06

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9781332345489

Excerpt from The Life of a Fox: Written by Himself No Master of Foxhounds, alive or dead, has a greater right to be heard than Mr. Thomas Smith. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and though it is not altogether true that the proof of the ability to show sport is the number of Foxes noses on the kennel door, the fact that Mr. Smith killed ninety Foxes in ninety-one days hunting in a Country which has no great reputation as a scenting country, is a piece of evidence in favour of his knowledge of woodcraft, and of his skill in applying it, which cannot be gainsaid, the more particularly when we take into account the epoch during which this remarkable feat was achieved. It is true that Mr. Smith hunted Hounds when the modern system of getting away close behind the Fox, and trying to burst him, had superseded the system that prevailed before 1750 of dragging up to the Fox and trying to hunt him down at the end of a long chase with Hounds that would have been beaten for pace in the first mile by those of Mr. Osbaldiston and Mr. Smith. But much of the contemporary evidence goes to show that Foxes were wilder in Mr. Smiths time in the sense that they probably had to travel long distances for their food, as there were fewer small coverts than exist to-day. Consequently there were fewer Foxes. It is true that these conditions were favourable to the Hounds in that their chance of changing Foxes was diminished. On the other hand the multiplication of small Fox coverts with artificial earths that has proceeded in the last fifty years makes the killing of a lot of Foxes, especially during the Cub-hunting, an easier matter than in the days of Mr. Thomas Smith. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.