Of course there is a difference in the two
sports, and the fun of actually hunting the wild beast in the one case
more than compensates for the fact that in the other the riding is
apt to be harder and the jumping higher; but both sports are really
artificial, and in their essentials alike. To any man who has hunted big
game in a wild country the stress laid on the differences between them
seems a little absurd, in fact cockney. It is of course nothing against
either that it is artificial; so are all sports in long-civilized
countries, from lacrosse to ice yachting.
It is amusing to see how natural it is for each man to glorify the
sport to which he has been accustomed at the expense of any other. The
old-school French sportsman, for instance, who followed the bear, stag,
and hare with his hounds, always looked down upon the chase of the fox;
whereas the average Englishman not only asserts but seriously believes
that no other kind of chase can compare with it, although in actual fact
the very points in which the Englishman is superior to the continental
sportsman--that is, in hard and straight-riding and jumping--are those
which drag-hunting tends to develop rather more than fox-hunting
proper.
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