These dreams are horrible phantasies that we have to indulge in whether we like them or not, and seldom are they pleasant, nor will they come at call. I tried to dream into the future of fishing, a sport I love so well. But, alas! the spirit moved me not. Those lusty trout and grayling, and those sportive salmon, refused to be allured by any new means; their ways were just the same, and no newly-defined artifices sufficed to bring them to hand more easily or with less practical skill. Only the ranks of their enemies seemed to have increased. More and more fishermen came on the scene, who sought them out farther and wider throughout remote countries, and more money and greater artifice was employed to effect their capture, so that their preservation became a question of the day, as it has, indeed, become so to-day.
Your younger readers will perhaps hail with delight these halcyon days of sport, which, if my dreams have any portent, are destined to come upon us all the more swiftly, seeing that riches as they accumulate bring in their train luxury and indulgence, and that it is to wealth that our landed estates must come, unless they are destined to be swept away by the flood of social democracy, which, thank God, does not come within the scope of my dreams, for if so, “I had,” as Shakespeare says, “passed a miserable night, so full of ghastly dreams.”
If perchance, however, my dreams should prove ominous, let me implore you who in the radiance of youth have the opportunity of guiding and shaping the destiny of sport, to hold fast by the truer principles which have hitherto held sport so high in this country, casting aside its meretricious aids and surroundings, which only sap its true vitality, and would fain emasculate its worth to us as a nation. Stand fast by “the horse and hound,” and maintain a deaf ear to the tempter that whispers of the gorgeous trappings and luxurious surroundings, which are the death role of genuine sport.
Shakespeare once more comes to my mind when in “Troilus and Cressida” he exclaims, “My dreams will sure prove ominous to-day.”
Borderer.
P.S.—Since writing the above article, I read with pleasure that the first blow has been struck at the Gimcrack Dinner by Mr. Hall Walker in favour of the Totalisator. He is not only an extensive owner of racehorses and a successful breeder, but also a man who has had ample opportunity of thinking out this subject from a national standpoint. This freely expressed opinion of Mr. Hall Walker’s on betting reform will, let us hope, bear fruit, even if it is after many days.
Foxhounds.
THEIR ANCESTRY.
It might raise a considerable amount of discussion to assert that the foxhound had a longer line of ancestry than other breeds brought under the fostering care of Englishmen, but this much can be said, that when public opinion was turning towards the correct methods for the attainment of animal perfection, interest was taken in foxhounds similar to that taken in the racehorse, the shorthorn, or the red Devon. Could such a date be accepted at about 1730?—which was nearly a quarter of a century before Eclipse was foaled. The newly formed Ormesby stock of shorthorns was then about to be removed to Ketton, near Darlington, and the Davys and Quartlys had not commenced their improvements on the Devons. But there is evidence that foxhounds were beginning to be thought of at the time, and by 1750 a great many noblemen and gentlemen were very intent on hound breeding.