Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/21

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OUT-DOOR GAMES

always be the sport of the rich and well-to-do, and it is sad to think that the hunting farmer is not to be found in the number that formerly was the case. Speaking from an outside view, the one man who ought to be able to hunt is the farmer. He occupies the land over which the field gallop; he is willing to be put to expense and trouble to keep up hunting, and yet the hardness of the times, the diminished profits, and the greater demand on his time, have sadly thinned the ranks of hunting farmers. Shooting is always in the hands of those who can afford a license and the other expenses, but these are of such a nature that this too is a sport for the well-to-do. Fishing in England, owing, it is presumed, to the huge increase of towns and water-polluting manufactures, is having its area seriously curtailed. Racing and coursing are participated in mainly because they are a source of gambling; the thousands that go to race and coursing meetings are gamblers, or at any rate many more than fifty per cent. are. Eliminate, if it were possible, all betting by a stroke of the pen, and most of the race meetings would die a natural death. If