Athletics and Football (extract)

PAPER-CHASJNG twenty y ars ago. Then, as soon as 'no scent' was called the hounds spread out ten yards apart in a fanlike form and swept every yard of ground till it ·was recovered, but now much is left to chance. Hares are very seldom caught by the hounps, and never if they know the rudiments of 'false ' laying, for a hound must be lucky indeed if he has not to go a mile or so more than the hares in a moderately long run. The distance run varies much, and usually con ists of a ring of eight to ten miles from the club-house, which is generally an old-fashioned suburban inn. Some clubs go much less, and there is a standing joke that no member of one well-known club had ever been seen off an equally well-known common of ahout two miles square, till one of them was found roaming about disconsolately quite lost three miles from home. The longest run we remember was round Ewell and Epsom and half-a-dozen other villages, about t\venty-four miles. J. S ott finished first in a little over three hours. Hares and hound alike should run in the colours of their club. Canvas shoes with india-rubber soles, worsted socks, flannel knickerbockers, and white or· dark blue watermcn's sweaters are the best things to wear in the winter, for if a brook has to be forded or a river swum the warm wet wool prevents any chill being taken in the coldest weather, and those who have tried it arc aware that it is cold after sunset running over two miles of heath, fagged out, in wet things. On no account, however tir d, should the runner walk more than a few yards at a time, but go on home at a jog-trot, however slow. \Vc remember a narrow escape from very serious results when a runner, far from home, sat down in a dry ditch to rest. Had he not been picked up and dosed with hot drink, and rubbed till his skin came off, the consequen es might have been grave indeed, for his hands and arms were 'dead' up to the armpits. \Ve can, however, speak from an experience now covering nearly tw nty years, and can positively say that we know of no man of the hundreds with whom we have been acquainted who , i. l