124 



LEAVES FROM A HUNTING DIARY 



they found a brace, one fox going away towards Copped Hall, the other 

 towards Nasing Coppice, fiounds were laid on to the line of the latter, 

 and they ran fairly fast towards Nasing Coppice, entering at the bottom 

 end of it. By the time several of us found ourselves well in the middle of 

 it and our horses up to their hocks in the boggy track we were traversing, 

 we could hear a holloa away at the top end. Mr. C. E. Green extricated 

 us out of the difficuly by turning sharp to the left down a narrow pathway 

 and jumping over a boggy and trappy place on to Nasing Common ; but 

 there was no great hurry, for scent was never good, but hounds made the 

 best of it, and the field revelled in the luxury while it lasted of some nice 

 grass fields properly and judiciously fenced, with hounds just going fast 

 enough to make craning a sin and gap-shoving immoral. 



Andrew Caldecott 



Ball Hill was reached, and "Bambridge" brushed over the rails in the 

 corner without touching a bar ; the showy-looking chesnut's education was 

 rapidly improving in the hands of a workman. He was one of the first 

 to cross the road with hounds as they ran full cry through the remainder 

 of the wood. A couple of colts belonging to me which were turned out in a 

 wood skirting Ball Hill for the si'LOiid time -u'itliin a u'cek showed their par- 

 tiality for hounds by joining in the chase, the consequence being that they 

 were returned on my hands next day with a polite note from the farmer 

 declining to keep them any longer ; by the bye, they do not seem any the 

 worse for their adventures. 



