336 HUNTING, ANCIENT AND MODERN 



of hounds over a country intersected by stiff fencing, 

 and, of course, this is so ; still, they did show that the 

 animals who ran were not the tow-rowing, muddling 

 brutes we hear so much about ; and, turning to other 

 records, we may find further statistics to give food 

 for reflection. 



Fast as are some modern runs, I read in the 

 chapter on Warwickshire Hunting in Sir Humphrey 

 de Trafford's Foxhounds of Great Britain, of the 

 great Epwell run in 1807 during Mr. Corbet's master- 

 ship, when his hounds ran from Epwell to Burton- 

 on-the-water, deep in the Heythrop country — a point 

 of twenty miles, while the distance run Avas thirty-five, 

 and this was done in four and a half hours, which, for 

 sustained pace, is not bad. But a few years later 

 " Nimrod " recorded the great Ditchley run with this 

 pack, when he declares that over the big fields at 

 Ladbrooke he had great difficulty in keeping pace 

 with these hounds "although mounted on a race- 

 horse in training." I have no record by me of the 

 time of Lord Redesdale's great Tar Wood run with 

 the Heythrop in 1847 ; but more than fifty years have 

 passed since Anstruther Thomson brought off the 

 Charndon Common run mentioned in his Remini- 

 scences — found in Claydon Woods and lost near 

 Merton — sixteen miles, no check; time one hour and 

 ticenty minutes; no one saw the end, but Mr. George 

 Drake went the longest. This is the fastest long run 

 that I ever heard of, and is most authentic. 



In Mr. John Hawke's pamphlet. The Meynellian 

 Science, or Fox-hunting upon System, he tells us that 

 Mr. Meynell " considered the first qualities in a fox- 



