HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS. 91 



values them at all, he is rather a subject to con- 

 gratulation. Fancy harriers with a fragrant 

 stag before them, and Melton — ^well, I won't 

 say behind, but rather on top of them. 



" A different hound," says Somerville, " for 

 different chases select," or words to that effect ; 

 but in his day the hound had only to consider 

 the game in front of him. Now his thoughts 

 are divided: for if he has any instinct of self- 

 preservation, the customer behind must com- 

 mand a certain amount of his attention. So the 

 harrier idea was abandoned, and for a time no 

 sta^ hunt loomed in the future. However, 

 Lord Hardwicke came to the rescue, and only 

 asking that the hunt servants should be 

 mounted, volunteered to bring down Her 

 Majesty's hounds and deer, and solve the long 

 unanswered problem as to whether the Melton 

 district is a good stag-hunting country. The 

 eccentric Lord Waterford used, when at Losely 

 to run red deer from time to time with a pack 

 which were not very particular about what might 

 be before them, as may be inferred from the fact 

 that they once had a capital gallop after the 

 village parson, whose pony's feet had been sur- 

 reptitiously perfumed with aniseed. In later 

 days, on the Donnington side of the Quorn 

 country, the late Marquis of Hastings used to 

 have an occasional stag hunt with the harriers 

 which he kept before taking the Quorn hounds, 

 but it does not appear that he did particularly 

 well at that game ; and with these exceptions, 

 stag hunting has always been, from one cause or 

 another, as rigorously excluded from Leicester- 



