A MONMOUTHSHIRE FOX. 347 



riper years provide me with so many instances of the 

 pluck and endurance of foxes bred between the Forest 

 of Dean on the one side and that of Gwent on the other, 

 that I am almost at a loss to know which run to select 

 for these pages. Before making my choice I may be 

 allowed some remarks on a country not known to many 

 hunting-men. As a riding country it certainly is not 

 to be commended. In the first place, it is quite half 

 woodland, and rather hilly. On its eastern boundary 

 comes the valley of the Wye, which I have just glanced 

 at, and which, except as a vulpine nursery, is useless 

 from a hunting point of view. In fact, the only parts 

 where hounds can really be ridden to are the un- 

 wooded portions of the great ridge between Usk and 

 Wye, part of the valley of the former river, and the 

 reclaimed land on the Severn shore, whose deep and 

 wide drains, locally known as " rheines," require a 

 hunter of some " scope," as those who, like myself, 

 have been in one know well. Nothing short of a 

 team of carthorses will extricate a hunter from them. 

 I ought, perhaps, to say that I do not refer at all to 

 the country hunted by the Monmouthshire Hounds, a 

 country in which I have hunted very little, but never- 

 theless seen some good gallops. 



March i5th, 188 , was the date of the run I select 

 to show what a Monmouthshire fox can do. At a 

 covert called Cross Robert we found, and hounds 

 started off a cracker through Fedwvawr Wood (which 

 unpronounceable name I beg the reader to recollect) 

 to the moorlands at the top of the Whitebrook Valley. 

 Thence he turned short back to Trelleck, whence he 



