198 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



coming at their fences like thunder, they seem to 

 leave everything far easier than some httle fellows 

 overmounted on a legs and wings sort of animal, 

 or a middle-weight on blood and quality. How it is 

 done is sometimes a mystery, and the only solution 

 is that a good big one is always better than a good 

 little one, and that the really good weight -carrier 

 never goes well excepting when under a welter. It 

 has been a very famous division to talk about when 

 the welters of the century are enumerated, and it is 

 not a little singular that so many of them have been 

 Master of Hounds — to include the great John Warde, 

 Mr. 'Jack' Musters, Mr. Samson Hanbury, Mr. 

 John Chaworth Musters, Mr. Henley Greaves, Mr. 

 Henry John Conyers, Lord Southampton, Mr. Cod- 

 rington (of the South Wilts), Lord Macclesfield, 

 Lord Sefton, Mr. George Lane Fox, Mr. Villebois, 

 Lord Portsmouth, Mr. John Booth, Mr. Weeble, Mr. 

 Hargreaves, Mr. H. Chaplin, Parson John Russell, 

 Mr. Algernon Rushout, Colonel Anstruther Thomp- 

 son, the Marquis of Worcester, Mr. Chandos Pole, 

 and others. Melton was very noted for her welters 

 in the early thirties, when Mr. Tom Edge, of Strolly, 

 rode 20 St., and was so often leading the Quorn when 

 riding either Guzman, Remus, or Banker, that for the 

 first-named ^50 was offered and refused for one day's 

 hunting on him, and Lord Middleton offered 2,200 

 guineas for the other two. Contemporary with Mr. 

 Edge (whose breed of pointers was the most famous 

 in England) was a Mr. Gurney, who began riding 



