34 HUNTING AND SPORTING NOTES. 



capital rim over the hills at Church Stretton. The 

 Shropshire did not venture from their kennels, and small 

 blame to them, for in the morning the travelhng was 

 dreadful 



Of Thursday, no tidings had reached me, but Friday 

 burst upon us as a day of good omen for the new year. 

 Jogging to covert was hot work, and the sight of some 

 lambs (Dorsets), then in a field by the roadside ere we 

 reached High Ercall, made us think strongly of the latter 

 days of February, and sigh to think that already the 

 season was three parts over, with none of those glorious 

 days to gloat over, which mark an epoch in a hunting 

 man's existence. 



A very large field were attracted by the morning, the 

 place of meeting, and the idea of distinguishing them- 

 selves on New Year's Day. Happy greetings rung out 

 so aptly, that it might well be said of High Ercall that it 

 was in high feather, and full of go on this spring-like 

 opening of A.D. 1886. The long cavalcade moved off to 

 Eowton Gorse, certainly the snuggest abode of foxdom in 

 Mr. Lonsdale's country, well chosen apparently in every 

 way for showing sport, as there is not another covert 

 near it, and a bold fox cannot take a bad line from it. 

 And yet how often has it been a base deceiver to the 

 fond hopes of many of us ? I can count up several days 

 when I have gone down to that brookside full of hope, 

 only to leave it in disgust. To begin with, the gorse is 

 so thick that foxes decline leaving it, and when they do 

 they seem to have only one idea, and that is to get back 

 there again. My experience of Eowton Gorse foxes is 

 that they are the worst in England. There were a brace 

 there to-day which never put even their noses ont of the 

 place, and, after twenty minutes' ferretting, managed to 

 get to ground, thus crushing our morning's hopes. I 

 may be fastidious about giving a fox a chance at starting 

 and placing the field at the covert side, but I am free to 

 confess that were I empowered to arrange the drawing of 

 Eowton Gorse, no horseman should go into that lower 

 field adjoining the gorse, at all. The buzz of two 

 hundred horsemen close to the gorse, and on the very 

 side where the black thorn cover joins the gorse, and is 

 the natural place of exit and entrance of the fox in his 



