00 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



marked the afternoon with a half-hour's burst of tremendous 

 pace. It was a gallop of a character altogether different to 

 that of Friday above, or of Wednesday (with the Belvoir) to 

 follow—the three runs being very characteristic of their respec- 

 tive countries. The Cottesmore after the first five minutes 

 (from Lady Wood), released themselves from small inclosures 

 and the interference of sheep and bullocks — then went like 

 wildfire over their great sweeping hills and wide well-gated grass 

 fields till they had burst their fox and horses too. At Braunston 

 Village they turned so short to the left that nine-tenths of their 

 hard-riding followers overshot the mark and could never get to 

 them again. Mr. Baird and Mr. Tailby were well on the inside ; 

 riding in a position suitable to their status and antecedents. 

 On the right flank were the huntsman with Downs, Mr. Beau- 

 mont, Col. Gosling, and one or two others — and so thus, with 

 hounds well in front, they went past the left of Oakham to the 

 rough rushy hillside above Langham, known I believe as Lang- 

 ham Pasture. Here their fox was so blown (twenty minutes 

 from the start) that he turned back almost in their face, and 

 crept into a willow-strip in the outskirts of Oakham town — the 

 pack at his very brush. There was actually, even in such a 

 spot, a fresh fox to relieve him ; and, as luck would have it, 

 they went on with the new comer, so losing the blood they had 

 fairly earned. Much of the ground over which they ran has 

 been recently drained, and showed a wonderful improvement 

 upon previous years. There were out to-day Mr. W. Baird, Sir 

 Bache and the Misses Cunard, Capt. and Mrs. Blair, Mr. and 

 Mrs. G. Baird, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Chaplin, Col. and Miss Palmer, 

 Capt. and Miss Starkie, Mrs. F. Sloane-Stanley, Mrs. Clayton, 

 the Misses Hopwood, Duke of Portland, Mr. Tailby, Colonels 

 Gosling and Percy, Capts. Ashton, Boyce, Jacobson, Smith, 

 Featherstonhaugh, Stephen, Messrs. Westley-Richards, Tryon 

 Dawson, Fludyer, W. Finch, F. and W. Gosling, Cochrane, 

 Marshall, S. Hunt, Hanbury, Newton, Beaumont, Peake, Adair, 

 Parker, Lubbock, Behrens, Custance, Whitworth — and twice as 

 many more. 



