7Q HUNTING AND SPOBTING NOTES. 



EIGHTEENTH WEEK, February 23 to 28. 



A liunting lioliday ! What an absurdity ! Not at all, 

 kind reader, to one whose life is not altogether given to 

 pleasure, and whose hunting days are all the more 

 treasured because they are holidciys. Well! to dear old 

 broad Yorkshire my steps I bent, and the first words that 

 caught my ears on landing on the platform were from a 

 buxom being, similarly emerging from the adjoining com- 

 partment — " Thank God, I'm once more in Yarkshire 

 agin." 



Perhaps I shall bitterly disappoint the majority of your 

 readers, dear Eddowes, by this week taking them over 

 fresh fields and pastures new, through unknown countries 

 and into regions where they will be unable to follow me ; 

 leaving it to kind friends to supply the vacuum which 

 otherwise there would be in local sport for want of 

 Borderer's ubiquity. '■ To the pint however," as Old 

 Jorrocks expressed it. A cold greeting of frost and snow, 

 on Saturday week, augured ill for a keen excursionist of 

 my turn of mind. Sunday, howev^er, seemed to tone down 

 the asperity of nature ; and Monday iiorning shone forth 

 with a south wind and a murky sky. North Dei gh ton is 

 a favourite Brahim Moor meet, and long ere we reached 

 it, pretty pink and black specks were converging by the 

 many bridle paths " to join the gay throng that came 

 marching along " to draw the Springs — two hundred at 

 least. Many a well-known face was there, and many a warm 

 greeting from friends, whose paths in life so seldom cross 

 ours in these later days, that for one who has a warm 

 corner in his heart for an old acquaintance, this re-union 

 had its particular charm. Nobody seems to get older in 

 Yorkshire, and nobody seems to lose his keenness for 

 hunting — and " The Borderer — keen young man," as a 

 friendly wit once dubbed him, tried to put on his best 

 Shropshire polish, and be keen too. No fox in the Springs, 

 nor in Smiler's Whin. The sight of it carried me back 

 twelve years, to a great run I once participated in from 

 here to Tadcaster Town End, and Shire Oaks, which I am 

 almost tempted to halt and tell of now. A trot back to 

 Braham Wood rather damped our spirits, as whoever saw 

 a Plumpton fox run straight ? Yes, he was there, the same 

 looking creature of years before. With hounds at his 

 brush we went for three big fields in right earnest, to 

 Plumpton Rocks. Here he was headed from his point, 



