372 LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



Saturday, i6th. Practised in the meadow at Broxbourne 

 and dinner at the Old Rye House. 



Sunday, 17th. Church at Waltham Abbey and excellent 

 dinner at Colvin's. 



Monday, i8th. Grand field day on Broxbourne Marshes, 

 with the Hertfordshire Yeomanry, reviewed by General Fearon. 

 Mock fight with artillery and skirmishing. Dined in tents 

 with the Hertfordshire and returned by barge. " Rocket " 

 much lighter from his week's excitement and bad hay. 



Began the season, 1849-50, by joining Mr. Frederick Petre's 

 harriers at Bush Wood, on Crooks' Farm. The morning mild, 

 close and foggy, with a light rain falling until about mid-day. 

 The harriers, gh^ couple, being mostly foxhound bitches between 

 20 and 22 inches, looking very clean bred and in excellent con- 

 dition and working and running very well together. Petre 

 takes a great interest in them and improves his pack each year, 

 having a fine range of country. In place of F. Barker he has 

 a servant this season as whip, but I think he will miss the 

 efficient help of the former, &c., &c. Thos. Helme and W. 

 Kortwright were out in the afternoon, each having lost a horse 

 since last season, the former his favourite old " Jack," who 

 went blind, and the latter his young brown horse from getting 

 hurt in the stifie while out at grass. 



"Cognac" preserves his character of an "unlucky horse" 

 in every particular. He was not lame when turned rough and 

 blistered in the early part of June, and seemed quite sound 

 when taken up in the middle of August, but with walking- 

 exercise merely he fell lame in the same leg that looked so 

 sound when he returned from Benbow, &c. ; there seems 

 nothing for it but to put him to ploughing and other work on 

 the farm. 



Riding for the Brush. 



After meetino- at Mr. Barnard's, Little Canfield Hall, on 

 Saturday, November 17th, 1849, and running a fox from Hog- 

 lands for one and three-quarter hours, the field was reduced to 

 a select half-dozen, consisting of Will Orvis, the Huntsman, 

 Household, Chafey, Robb, Mr. Woodbridge, while I was 

 riding my favourite " Wide Awake " ; the hounds evidently 

 felt their fox was sinking, and smelling blood, increased their 

 pace until the last two or three fields they were running in 

 view. A kill in the open being evident, each one of the select 

 half-dozen bethought himself of the brush, and as the fox, as 

 they commonly do when sinking, kept turning, each one had 

 an equal chance. Household and Chafey especially were racing 



