325 lp:aves from a hunting diary 



hung about the Httle coverts below held by Dr. Sewell, the 

 attraction being the refuse from the London slaughter 

 houses brought down and thrown on the manure heaps. 

 During the last two years on several occasions Mr. Barnes' 

 drag hounds have hunted these foxes, once running to 

 Havering, where, although the fox was only just in front of 

 them dead beat, Mr. Barnes whipped off 



Hearing that they were still there on Easter Monday, 

 1896, he took 4 couple of hounds, 2 couple of seasoned 

 hounds he had just bought from the Essex, and 2 couple of 

 his old hounds that Mrs. Pemberton-Barnes kept back for 

 her own pets when the rest were sold, and a wire-haired 

 terrier, and went to try and find one. After drawing all Dr. 

 Sewell's coverts and adjoining hedges blank, he was just on 

 the point of returning home when up jumped a whacking 

 great dog fox off Mr. Lamb's fallow, half-a-niile from 

 Wanstead Park and 8 miles from Whitechapel. Mr. Barnes 

 had his small pack on his tracks like a shot, and for twenty 

 minutes they stuck to him like glue until they reached the 

 boarded fence at Claybury, under which, by the scratching and 

 whining of hounds, there appeared to be little doubt that 

 he had escaped. Now came the turning point in this hunt, 

 for had Mr. Barnes set off immediately, having to make a 

 wide dMour to get round the fence, the fox would probably 

 have escaped ; but like a prudent general he determined to 

 make all his oround orood. Makino- nothino- of it, he was 

 movmg off, and was already some 100 yards away, when the 

 wire-haired terrier'^ found and bolted him from a drain close 

 to the place the hounds had marked under the fence. From 

 this point he had no respite, for the pace quickening (scent 

 throughout had been very good, rye and wheats were all well 

 up), they ran into and killed him at Great Gearies, Barking Side, 

 torty-three minutes from the find, a big old clog fox. Among 

 the fortunate few who were present on this eventful Easter 

 Monday in 1896, to see perhaps the last really wild fox that 

 was legitimately hunted and killed by hounds within 8 miles of 

 Whitechapel, we find, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Pemberton-Barnes, 

 Miss E. Alorgan, Messrs. Ingram (2), Lambs {2), J. Hatton, 

 and J. Fardell. 



How fast Hounds seem to run when you are not with 

 them is no less true than the varying accounts you hear from 

 different individuals of a day's hunting ; and to these accounts 



'•' Bravo, " wire-haired ! " — Ed. 



