184 GORSE COVERTS 



their nostrils, awakens the stern joy, the hunting 

 instinct so strongly implanted in the human breast. 

 For a picturesque, but most thoroughly faithful, 

 description of a woodland find, read Whyte-Melville's 

 run with the Pippingdon hounds in Tilbury Nogo, or 

 his chapter on " The Provinces " in Riding Recol- 

 lections. These bring the scene and action before 

 one as the writings of that lamented author alone 

 can do, and we feel, as we read, his enthusiastic 

 pleasure in the wild sport he so vividly describes. 

 Fond as we may be of the gorse enclosure, the 

 opening note, the rattling view holloa, and the sight 

 of the pack pouring from the covert, the other is the 

 real thing, depend upon it ; and the twenty minutes' 

 " coffee-housing " outside the gorse, without a glimpse 

 of a hound, contrasts badly with the enthralling 

 sight of a gallant pack of hounds drawing up to 

 their fox in a picturesque woodland on a good 

 scenting day. 



These words call up thrilling recollections of long ago 

 as I write them, and I see again in imagination a lovely 

 dingle in the West country — a little wooded glen or 

 strath. A trout stream ripples along between steeply 

 sloping banks, clothed thickly in places, sparsely in 

 others, with holly and hazel coppice. Now and again 

 the valley widens, and stately silver firs spring from 

 the flat greensward beside the stream, which babbles 

 on to join the Tavy. Above, on the right bank, gallant 

 old Squire Trelawney, of Coldrennick, leads a goodly 

 throng, and cheers the pack beneath him as they 

 spread and try for a touch of a fox. In a wide 

 glade a little badger-pied bitch becomes very busy, 



