“My own practice has always been to have one meet the first week in March, and then end the season. I was once or twice tempted to go on later, and once killed a doe in kindle. Since then I have kept to my rule. She gave us a sharp run of twenty minutes or half an hour. This, I think, disposes of the theory that a pregnant hare has no scent. Possibly she has less than she would have normally. But _per contra_ she must be handicapped by her condition. Then there is the risk of a chop. And it cannot be good for an animal big with young to be bustled and frightened. “There is yet a worse danger. In some forward seasons there may be leverets by the second week in March. The dam might be killed, and the leverets left to die. I would almost sooner never hunt again than run such a risk. Of course, one might hunt through March for several seasons and none of these things happen; but there must be a risk, and I do not myself think that one is justified in running it.” What is true of the Eton beagles is true of every hare-hunt throughout the country. The sport ought to be brought to a close on the last day of February, as, indeed, used to be the custom. “Coursing still goes on among a few,” wrote the author of the “Sporting Almanack” for March, 1843, “but in our opinion the fair sportsman will _hold hard_ as soon as March sets in.”[32] Much, then, of the hare-hunting of the present time is _not_ fair. Still worse is the case of otter-hunting, which is carried on from springtime till autumn, with the result that females heavy with young must occasionally be worried, though sportsmen plead that this is never intentional. An instance that has often been quoted is recorded in the Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley’s “Life and Recollections,” where the story is told of a female otter disturbed by the hounds “in the act of making a couch for her young.” “At her we went for seven hours, with constant views, and during that time, on a stump overhanging the river, she miscarried and gave birth to two cubs, born only a few days before their time. A hound found them, and when I took one in my hand it was scarcely cold. She beat us for want of light, and well she deserved to escape.” Similar instances are recorded from time to time, as by a correspondent of the _Morning Leader_, who told how in Devonshire, in 1891, a female otter, after being worried for nearly four hours, had given birth to two dead whelps.