174 GORSE COVERTS 



always fascinated me to hear a late well-known M.F.H. 

 relate how his father used to wait with his hounds 

 on a wild, heathery hill " for the day to break that he 

 might drag up to his fox." 



For my part, I believe that the impulse which drew 

 those ancestors of ours from downy pillows and port- 

 laden slumbers, when " bright Chanticleer proclaimed 

 the morn," was tinged with a strong feeling of 

 romance and poetry. 



Few men in these galloping days go out with a view 

 of deriving much pleasure from seeing hounds find 

 their fox, and, indeed, the chorus of the invisible pack 

 from the green depths of a gorse must be but a scanty 

 joy to the seniors, who declare that what they now 

 care about is " to see a fox well found." The multi- 

 tude, however, prefers the gorse covert, with its 

 surroundings of green pasture-lands, to the echoing 

 woodland with its heavy rides, up which we splash 

 nearly to our girths. Taking all things into considera- 

 tion, perhaps the multitude is right, and, personally, 

 I have derived endless pleasure, both in summer and 

 winter, from a gorse covert, which for many years 

 has been my constant and pleasing care, but which 

 now, alas ! presents a sad appearance of blackened 

 desolation. 



Its glories have departed. No more does the splendid 

 sheet of gold add beauty to the landscape in the merry 

 month of May; and what more lovely spectacle on 

 earth is there than a gorse covert in full bloom ? Do 

 you remember what Linnaeus said about gorse, or 

 how Wallace, in his Malay Archipelago, wrote that 

 " during twelve years spent amid the grandest tropical 



