hunting, but I merely prenched to them on the one thing needful. Finding 

 they had nothing to lay hold of, they had the race on Monday and ran Hypocrite 

 against Martha and jMary."" 



Good old precursors of the Bombay Hunt ! 



Sd. — Thistle-Whipper. 



The Calcutta Hunt of which, as we say, the Calcutta 

 Paperchase Club of to-day is the lineal descendant, is 

 of greater antiquity than the Bombay or Madras Hunts, 

 and it continued a more or less prosperous existence till 

 about the beginning of the seventies, when they 

 began to think that it gave them very poor fun and it 

 became necessary to go very far afield for their meets. 

 In the old Oriental Sporting Magazine for July 1829, the 

 following passage occurs relative to the country and pack 

 of hounds in Bombay : " In Calcutta there seems to be 

 no want of thorough-bred foxhounds, and it would be a 

 hard case if there was, considering the immense prices 

 given and the attention shown to the sporting men in 

 whose ships they are brought out." The same historian 

 regretfully continued : — 



" From the want of a hunt similar to the Calcutta in 

 the Island of Bombay one can never expect to see a 

 pack of thorough-bred hounds on this side of India, at 

 least for a continuance. Bombay itself is unfit for hunting 

 — let alone the want of spirit for the thing — but what a 

 splendid country is Salsette — scarce ten miles distance." 



This historian turned out to be a great prophet, for 

 Salsette is to the Bombay Hunt what the Ashby Pastures 

 are to another celebrated institution in Leicestershire. 

 However, we may take it from this that the Calcutta Hunt 

 was in even those early days a very flourishing concern. 

 The Bombay Hounds did not come into existence till 1830, 

 or a little later, if one is to accept the authority of the 

 Bombay scribe of the Oriental Sporting Magazine^ 



