90 NIMROUS NORTHERN TO UR. 



where they abound, they cannot well be otherwise, manned as 

 they are. 



As to nose it is the fashion of the day to doubt the low scent- 

 ing powers of very high-bred fox-hounds, but this results from 

 prejudice. Beckford properly remarks, that he can easily con- 

 ceive a fox-hound to be too low-bred to be good in chase, but the 

 reverse was to him irreconcilable, and so it is to me. What is 

 meant by a high-bred fox-hound but one the most highly refined, 

 and therefore the most perfect, of his species ? As for myself, I 

 never will believe but that, at the end often minutes, best pace, 

 the high-bred fox-hound, at a ticklish point, is worth half a dozen 

 Towlers and Jowlers with their tongues out, and dead blown. 

 But they i.e., the high-bred ones are apt to be " a leetle in a 

 hurry," as Tom Rose said of his, and will now and then overrun 

 the point, with a crowd of horsemen at their heels. As far, how- 

 ever, as my observation carried me, the duke's hounds stand 

 pressing about as well as most others do at the present day. " I 

 care not whose they are," Tom Wingfield used to say, " they will 

 all fly over it now and then." 



In cover. I have heard it said, and I have read in print, that 

 these hounds are rather slack in facing strong gorse covers. I 

 must say I saw nothing of the sort ; but shall presently produce 

 a fact quite au contraire. Without a scent, I call them very fair 

 drawers ; with a scent, the strongest gorse in Roxburghshire 

 will not stop them out, and I here speak fiom facts. On this 

 part of my subject, then, I need riot add more than that the 

 sportsman who is not satisfied with the performance of the Duke 

 of Buccleuch's hounds not quite faultless perhaps in the field, 

 must be very difficult to please ; and still more fastidious must 

 be the eye which is not delighted with their appearance in the 

 kennel. They may be said to want nothing but a better country, 

 for from what I saw and heard of that hunted from the Dalkeith 

 kennel the East Lothian it is very so-so. On this subject, 

 however, the less said the better ; for if there were to be no fox- 

 hounds kept except in good countries, there would not, accord- 

 ing with some persons' estimation of them, be more than half a 

 dozen packs in the whole world. On the contrary, every en- 

 couragement should be given to resident noblemen and gen- 

 tlemen to hunt their own countries, whether good or bad, the 

 beneficial effects of which are so powerfully felt in their neigh- 

 bourhood. 



HAVING spoken of the hounds, the huntsman necessarily follows. 

 But my notice of the Duke of Buccleuch's huntsman in the field 

 will be brief ; for if, as Livy said of Cicero, " Cicero's panegyrist 



