means to send their dogs about, and to run them for stake money, instead of keeping them for home use.
The smaller and poorer squires and many of the farmers still kept up their kennels for home sport only, and until the pernicious Hares and Rabbits Act was passed these gentry continued to enjoy their coursing in a simple and homely fashion.
Those who lived in the more remote districts have been, naturally enough, the last to adopt public coursing; but even in some of these districts, where the squire used to grant a day's leave to his tenants and their friends, the day, originally quite private, with no stake money allowed, became gradually more and more public, until at last it assumed the proportions of a public coursing, and though, perhaps, still confined to dogs nominated by the tenants, nevertheless brought together a crowd of the neighbouring public, and did not escape the notice of the reporter for the local newspaper. This, however, is an age of rushing into print, and we have seen in a mining district a six-dog stake at £1 apiece which produced a report of a quarter of a column!
Private coursers of the old type were, in nineteen cases out of twenty, landowners, or tenant-farmers who had leave to course, the twentieth case being that of the individual (there used to be one or two in every
