It is interesting, I mean for a fox-hunter, to try and discover why the hare was so much preferred to the fox by the sportsmen of two hundred years ago. One of them gives this reason: “The Fox never flies far before the Hounds, trusting not on his Legs, Strength or Champion ground [champaign = open country] but strongest Coverts,” and “when he can no longer stand up before the Hounds, he then taketh Earth, and then must he be digged out.” From these two sentences it is obvious that harriers, accustomed as they were to find their game in the open country, had not developed the habit of drawing thick coverts, and were probably poor hands at bustling a fox in a whin cover and at forcing him out. Indeed, we find that they were not always good at finding a hare in the open, for it was a custom to employ “hare-finders,” and Peter Beckford, though he admits paying two guineas in a single day to the men who were thus employed, laments the demoralisation of hounds, consequent on the custom making them bad finders. But there were other reasons. Hares were “game”; they were protected under the Game Laws and by special statutes, such as that of 15 Henry VIII. cap. 18, which made it a penal offence to destroy hares in the snow. The hare was, moreover, ubiquitous, whilst foxes were vermin, and regarded as noxious animals with a price on their heads, fixed by law or local custom--they were scarce and held in contempt when packs of hounds first came in vogue. [Illustration: MISS LAVENDER PEASE ON “ZACCHEUS.” From a painting by Mr. Heywood Hardy.] Since penning this sentence I have turned over my Beckford. He says: “The hounds most likely to show you sport are between the large, slow-hunting harrier and the little fox-beagle. The former are too dull, too heavy, and too slow; the latter too lively, too light, and too fleet.” He thinks that if the day is long enough you might kill with the first species, and if the country was deep and wet, the others might be drowned. Beckford bred for many years an “infinity of hounds” before he got what he wanted, but at last he had the pleasure to see them “very handsome,” “small yet bony,” after which, he cynically remarks, “when they were thus perfect, I did as many others do, I parted with them.”