U HUNTING AND SPORTING NOTES. 



Saturday Sir Watkin was at the old racecourse, Whit- 

 church. A fine frosty morning, and there was the same 

 large cavalcade of welcome that usually does honour to 

 this fixture. Two M.F.H's., Mr. Eeginald Corbet and 

 Mr. Lonsdale, came to congratulate Sir Watkin on his 

 improved health. Sandford Pool, a long trot through 

 Shropshire country, curiously enough, past the Twemlows, 

 was our first draw, nor did it keep us long in suspense. 

 A fox was away over the high pastures, and hounds set 

 to work to run with a will for about fifteen minutes. 

 What a glorious sight it was to see the galaxy of beauty, 

 two hundred men and women all sailing away to their 

 heart's delight over a line of grass, as if the ocean would 

 not stop them. A late comer, with a wide berth on the 

 left had ample scope for a bird's eye view of the hounds 

 and the bulk of the field below him. Two or three 

 riderless horses were careering before we reached the 

 osier bed near Cloverley, where hounds threw up, ane 

 Goodall held them on by the pool in vain. It looked 

 a horse to a hen against his hitting him off, w^hen a 

 timely holloa near the Lodge Gates put us all agoing 

 again, and hounds settled merrily to work over the big 

 fields that soon brought us nearly to Twemlow, turning 

 short, from which he began to run short, and was caught 

 handsomely in the open in a small enclosure before he 

 could get back to Sandford Pool. Without being brilliant, 

 this run had kept us in exercise. Flasks and sandwiches, 

 then another call at Sandford Pool, without a response, 

 then a couple of spinneys were interviewed en route for 

 Cloverley big wood. This was carefully drawn without a 

 whimper, and Goodall had got his hounds nearly to the 

 gorse, when there was a tallyho back in the corner of the 

 covert. Hounds, however, could make nothing of it, and 

 scent under dry fallen oak leaves was simply nil. A fox 

 had evidently entered Cloverley Gorse before the hounds, 

 and they spoke to him the moment they entered. Had he 

 been a good one he would have made tracks at once, instead 

 of which he hung about with the pack at his brush for some 

 minutes, and at last made a dash for Ightfield. For a few 

 fields it looked like a gallop, but headed, we were soon at 

 Cloverley big wood again, and back to the Gorse. 

 Here he or another indulged the field with a 

 pretty little ring to- wards Sandford and back to 

 Cloverley, where he might as well have been under- 



