RIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS. 205 



My own experience of "the calf," as it has been 

 ignominiously termed, is limited to three packs Mr. 

 Bissett's, who hunts the perfectly wild animal over the 

 moorlands of Somerset and North Devon ; Baron 

 Rothschild's, in the Vale of Aylesbury ; and Lord 

 Wolverton's blood-hounds, amongst the combes of 

 Dorsetshire ~and " doubles " of the Blackmoor Vale. 

 With her Majesty's hounds I have not been out more 

 than three or four times in my life. 



Let us take the noble chase of the West country 

 first, as it is followed in glorious autumn weather through 

 the fairest scenes that ever haunted a painter's dream ; 

 in Horner woods and Cloutsham Ball, over the grassy 

 slopes of Exmoor, and across the broad expanse of 

 Brendon, spreading its rich mantle of purple under skies 

 of gold. We could dwell for pages on the associations 

 connected with such classical names as Badgeworthy- 

 water, New-Invention, Mountsey Gate, or wooded Glen- 

 thorne, rearing its garlanded brows above the Severn 

 sea. But we are now concerned in the practical question, 

 how to keep a place with Mr. Bissett's six-and-twenty- 

 inch hounds running a "warrantable deer" over the 

 finest scenting country in the world ? 



You may ride at them as like a tailor as you please. 

 The ups and downs of a Devonshire coombe will soon 



