NIM 'ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 151 



I think my brother sportsmen will admit, that a more graphic 

 description of the modern hunter could not have been given in 

 fewer words. Mr. Inglis showed me this letter on his file, and 

 said he should preserve it as a guide to his future purchases, al- 

 though he feared it might be long ere he met with the animal it 

 -described. 



The month of December is not the time to see many good 

 hunters in a dealer's stable ; and I have reason to believe, they 

 are pretty quickly, after their arrival in Edinburgh, picked out 

 of these and the other sale-stables, if likely to " do the trick." 

 Mr. Inglis had but a few in his, and those not exactly my sort ; 

 but he told me he was on the point of setting out for Yorkshire 

 to procure a fresh lot, that being the county to which he looks 

 for a supply. When on the subject of horses, and their essentials, 

 however, he mentioned a fact that surprised me. It was that of 

 a horse which had been hunted thirty-one seasons; that he was 

 still alive, and at Mr. Ramsay's, of Barnton. We may here con- 

 clude one of two things that he was hunted with harriers or 

 beagles ; or that he belonged to one of Williamson's " pusilani- 

 mous riders."* 



Monday, 8th. Met Mr. Ramsay again, about ten miles from 

 Edinburgh, the morning stormy and wild " ventosus '*' again, as 

 . Lord Kintore says, with the addition of a driving snow storm, 

 that drove me into a house for shelter, on my road to cover. But 

 by way of amends for this, I saw something as I rode along, to 

 amuse me. I observed a man upon a bay horse, two or three 

 hundred yards a-head of me, which I concluded he was taking 

 to meet the hounds. I observed his horse stop short and kick. 

 I thought little of this ; he might be fresh, and I only hoped the 

 kick would be taken out of him before night. I then got along- 

 side of him, and a short parley took place between his rider and 

 myself having first satisfied myself that this said horse had been 

 given up by Sir David Baird, who had him at Dunse, as per- 

 fectly useless as a hunter, for he would not only refuse his fences, 

 but stand still and kick in the middle of a field, while the hounds 

 were running : 



Nimrod. You have a fine slapping horse there. (He was 

 quite the stamp for Leicestershire.) 



Servant. A capital hunter, sir, 



* Some one was describing a run of a certain extent to Williamson, 

 in which the hounds had run clean away from the field. "Indeed !" 

 said he, " and over that fine country, too ! Surely they must have been 

 mounted on vary indifferent horses, or been vary pu-si-la-ni-mous 

 riders." 



