As long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in the land, and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, no one could think of following the fox.

It is pursued because the bigger beasts of the chase have been killed out.

In England it has reached its present prominence only within two centuries; nobody followed the fox while the stag and the boar were common.

At the present day, on Exmoor, where the wild stag is still found, its chase ranks ahead of that of the fox.

It is not really the hunting proper which is the point of fox-hunting.