1 8 NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



sons ; " she'll tell us^ I'll be bound ;" which she immediately did. 

 As for myself, I often amuse myself with thinking that the 

 maxim of like begetting like, in animal economy, should be more 

 considered than it is, with human beings who wish their descend- 

 ants to excel in any particular calling ; for no doubt blood tells 

 here as well as in the brute race. Indeed it has been a matter 

 of surprise to me, that such uncommon anxiety and care should 

 have been bestowed in improving the breed of animals, and that 

 a perfect indifference and neglect should prevail in regard to 

 the human race, which has no doubt degenerated within the last 

 century or two, if not within my own time. For the sake of the 

 sporting world, then, I hope the young lady in question married 

 a sportsman, as there could be no doubt of the issue being " true 

 on the line," as we say of good hounds. 



A short time after the appointed hour, Mr. Ridley, who takes 

 great interest in the hounds and is, I am told, a very popular and 

 promising young sportsman, arrived, but his father,-Sir Matthew, 

 was absent from temporary indisposition. Mr. Ridley's manner 

 pleased me ; there was an unaffected open-heartedness about it, 

 and he greeted his friends and brother sportsmen as a master of 

 hounds ought to do. The field was anything but numerous, and 

 after exchanging a few words with those composing it, he thus 

 addressed his huntsman, "Now, Boag, put on your spectacles,* 

 and let us begin ;" and we soon found ourselves in a cover of 

 great extent, called Horsley-wood one hundred and seven acres 

 I was told, which the hounds had not as yet been in during the 

 season, and Boag himself never. 



As if by instinct, however, he threw his hounds into a corner 

 of it in which there was a warm drag of a fox, and in less than 

 ten minutes he was on foot. Nor was this the extent of his 

 good luck, or I might rather say of his merit. He got away with 

 his fox in an extraordinary short time, considering the extent of 

 the cover, and the fact of his never having been in it before \ 

 but owing to a puzzling check at a gentleman's house hard by, 

 where the pack divided, and a very middling scent, he was soon 

 lost. A second fox was found in a neighbouring whin, Throckley- 

 fell I think was the name of the place, which went gallantly 

 away, and was, we understood, handsomely killed at the end of 

 a fifty minutes' hunting-run. Indeed as far as Mr. Surtees and 

 myself could follow them with our eyes having taken our stand 

 upon rather elevated ground, they appeared to be proceeding 

 in a business-like manner, although with scarcely a holding, 

 much less a burning, scent ; but over as nice a country as any 



* Mr. Boag is what is termed short-sighted, and wears a pair of 

 extremely light steel-mounted spectacles. 



