Little wonder is it, therefore, that there arose a veritable literature which revolved round the pivot of sport and especially that of hunting. I need hardly say that the conditions of the pursuit of game changed with the state of the country. In the middle ages the greater part of England was wooded. The greenwood was the home of the outlaw; and it was said that a squirrel could cross England without touching the ground. The chase was therefore pursued in glades and thickets; and could never have been a very rapid affair. What riding was done in the open country was connected with hawking--a very favourite pastime. Gradually, as the country became more open and the forests disappeared, the fox, which our ancestors regarded as vermin, began to be looked upon as a sacred animal, because of the excellent runs he gave. For a long time the hunting was slow and its arrangements very primitive; those who joined in it being the squire, his friends, and his dependants; but gradually the crack riders began to gather from all parts to where the best hunting was to be had; and Leicestershire became the chief centre. Fashionable hunting, as opposed to the rural and purely local sport, seems to have begun at the time of the Regency in the days of the “dandies”; and I have a recollection of an oft-quoted description by “Nimrod” of the way in which a stranger was gradually recognised and welcomed when he came among the hunting fraternity at Melton Mowbray. But it is my intention to speak of a later period when hunting had become a sport in which men, who had no connection with the locality, came down from London to take part. In olden days the town sportsman was a theme of constant derision. John Gilpin’s ride, and Mr. Winkle’s difficulties with his horse, were typical stories. The caricaturists were never tired of depicting the quaint and somewhat dangerous antics of the Londoner with a shotgun, and jokes at his ignorance of all sports were the stock in trade of the humourist. Gradually however these began to fall flat. As the country became accessible, first by good roads, and then by railways, men from London joined in its pastimes, and proved themselves anything but ridiculous where horse and gun were concerned.