334 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN 



That question concerning the pace of hounds which 

 he had raised has often been debated. Many people 

 hold that hounds run faster now than they did in 

 the days of our ancestors. When writing recently 

 on the subject of great runs, I read some of the 

 pages to a friend who had dropped in for a chat, 

 and he remarked, apropos of the time of Mr. Bell's 

 Gal way run in 1906 and Mr. John Watson's run from 

 Corballis, " By Jove ! how astonished our ancestors 

 would have been to see hounds flying over the 

 country at such a pace." But when thinking the 

 matter over afterwards it came to my mind that 

 this question of "pace," which so many put before 

 everything else nowadays, is one that, when studied, 

 may give results that will considerably surprise the 

 up-to-date sportsman, who believes implicitly that 

 the hounds and horses of the twentieth century are 

 as superior in point of speed to those of the 

 beginning of the nineteenth as the motor-car that 

 takes him to covert is to the " Tilbury " that carried 

 his grandfather. But it was as far back as the 

 end of the eighteenth century that Mr. Meynell's 

 two foxhounds were beaten at Newmarket, "four 

 miles from the town-end Rubbing-House to the 

 Rubbing- House at the Starting Post of the Beacon 

 Course," by Mr. Barry's Bluecap and Wanton, who 

 completed the four miles in "a few seconds above 

 eight minutes." Now, Mr. Meynell was held to have 

 the best pack of foxhounds in England ; he was a 

 great houndman and a scientific fox-hunter, so that 

 it is not likely that his Richmond and the nameless 

 bitch who ran with him would have been kept in 



