NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. iHi 



marks upon Forfarshire ; and it is particularly entitled to the 

 notice of sportsmen from the fact of its having been the scene of 

 fox-hunting in very early days. William the Lion, Alexander 

 the Second, and Alexander the Third, all Kings of Scotland, 

 hawked and hunted over it, and the one last named held his court 

 at the palace of Forfar nearly half the year, for the purpose of 

 sporting over the county. In what state it then was as to enclo- 

 sures, or agriculture, I am unable to conjecture, but it is now saki 

 to contain 340,000 acres of arable land, and appeared to me to 

 be the most roomy enclosed county, if such an expression may be 

 allowed me, that I hunted over in Scotland. It has been regu- 

 larly hunted by fox-hounds for about eighty years. Lord Kintore 

 hunted it twice, and the renowned Captain Barclay of Ury once; 

 and it is from their experience I speak as much as from my OWR. 

 It has an advantage over Fife in the nature of the stone with 

 which the walls are built, which seldom lacerates, and, generally 

 speaking, it holds a fair scent I may perhaps say more than a* 

 average scent for a ploughed country, which the greater portion 

 of the enclosed part of it is. This may in part be accounted for 

 by the fact, that, by the universal law of nature, all mountainous 

 countries, like Scotland, accumulate much moisture, so that the 

 surface of the fallows do not become arid and scentless, as they 

 do in the flatter but exposed counties of England, during the 

 prevalence of high and cold winds. But all " walled countries, 1 * 

 as they are called, are objectionable, it being injurious to hound* 

 to jump off from them, which they do with great violence when 

 their fox is sinking before them the time of all others when the> 

 are less able to withstand the force of the shock they sustain by 

 it. It is true there are many perhaps too many large woods 

 in Forfarshire, but there are whin covers in it that would do 

 credit to any shire. 



It is scarcely necessary to observe, that Mr. Dalyell at this 

 time, as at the present, hunted his hounds himself, assisted in 

 the kennel as well as in the field by John Skinner, his first 

 whipper-in, a name very well known in the fox-hunting world. 

 There are three brothers, all at present with hounds, and the 

 father of them, brought up by the late Mr. Meyneil at Ouorn, 

 was fifty-five years with fox-hounds, without once being absent 

 from them, with the exception of the period of nineteen weeks, 

 when he was confined to his bed by a fall. One of his sons also 

 had an awful fall some years back, by which an arm and thigh 

 were fractured ; and Tom Skinner, now huntsman to Mr. De 

 Burgh's stag-hounds, whom I knew in Warwickshire, when he 

 whipped-in to Mr. Hay, met with a sad accident last winter ini 

 the field, from which I much fear he is not yet recovered. His 



