THE MIDDLESEX 



" Wellboume," it means a good deal. Representatives of twenty-six Hunts 

 were there that day, and many of them had come a long journey to be 

 present. There were some very good days in the fortnight which followed ; 

 and when the Middlesex hounds finally went north again to their home country 

 they left many friends behind them. 



The match was productive of one result which made a great deal of dif- 

 ference in the future of the pack. Up to that time the Virginians had not 

 seen what a really good pack of English foxhounds could do; in fact, they 

 were very much under the impression that English hounds, while they might 

 be all right in their own country, could show no sport in America, a judg- 

 ment based on the work of a few single hounds which had drifted into the 

 country. So good, however, were some of the days in 1905, that the Vir- 

 ginians began to think that, after all, there was a good deal of sport m hunt- 

 ing behind a pack of well-mannered hounds which ran together and were 

 amenable to some discipline, even if they were not quite so good at cold 

 trailing as their American cousins. At any rate, in the spring of 1 906, Mr. 

 Higginson received an invitation from the Masters of both the Piedmont and 

 the Loudoun County Hunts to take three days a week of their respective 

 countries for the following season. The objection to this plan was, of course, 

 that it meant a shortening of the home season in Massachusetts, but arrange- 

 ments were finally made by which this could be done to the satisfaction of 

 all concerned. Thirty-five couples of hounds, together with horses and the 

 Hunt staff, went to Leesburg, Virginia, in the Loudoun country, and ken- 

 neled there at "Big Spring Farm," very kindly loaned by Westmoreland 

 Davis, Esq., M. F. H. of the Loudoun County Hunt ; and during the months 

 of November, December and January, the Middlesex went out three days a 

 week and the Loudoun two. The Loudoun country borders on that over 

 which the foxhound match had been held in the previous year, so that 

 some of it was familiar to Bob Cotesworth, who hunted the hounds this 

 season for the last time, with Harry Hopkins, late of the Vine, and Will 

 Edwards as whippers-in. 



Loudoun County and its bordering country is the equal, if not the superior, 

 of any hunting country in America. The coverts are large, but not so large 



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