Those who would understand the Science of Foxhunting cannot do better than read _The Life of a Fox_ in conjunction with _The Diary of a Huntsman_ by the same Author. Professor Huxley said somewhere that Science is Organized Commonsense. The Science of Foxhunting is eminently a matter of Commonsense, and there is no wiser exponent of it than Mr. Thomas Smith. So far from relying on “intuition” he has the unique distinction of being the only writer who has put upon paper a definite recipe for a cast in the form of a Map, together with the whole process of reasoning by which it is justified. _The Diary of a Huntsman_, in which this Map appears, is a vindication of the importance of following certain rules. The departure from these rules on the part of various Huntsmen is the cause of the satisfaction expressed at the symposium of “Wily,” “Pytchly,” “Warwick,” “Sandy” and all the other Foxes who appear in this Volume. TO THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES, EARL OF HARDWICKE, etc. etc. etc. My Lord,—It is customary in a Dedication to use the language of fulsome adulation, even in cases where the writer and the person addressed affect an equal abhorrence of it. Adopting a more simple, straightforward course, and one more worthy of my name, for few foxes have run more straight, I will candidly inform your Lordship that the love I bear you is much the same as that borne to myself by the most venerable hen now cackling in your farmyard, whose half-fledged brood I have often thinned. But, my Lord, although I openly acknowledge my aversion to the unfeathered biped species to which you belong, yet the kinds and degrees of hatred are various as the characters of those towards whom we entertain it; and while some, affecting to treat my persecuted race as noxious vermin, destroy us by day and by night with snare, trap, gun, and every other engine which their ingenuity can devise, we have always found in your Lordship a fair and open enemy, and one who disdained to have recourse to the cowardly contrivances above referred to. It is on this account, my Lord, that I have done you the honour to dedicate to you the following narrative of my eventful life.