COURSING 



defeat : her son Claret was a famous dog, and 

 Claret's son Snowball was * supposed to be (taken 

 for everything) the best greyhound that ever was': 

 this, despite the fact that his brother, Major, 

 always beat him. 



The literature of coursing is curiously scant, 

 having regard to the antiquity of the sport. That 

 is a picturesque account of it given by Christopher 

 North (1842). *01d Kit' held organised coursing 

 of small account by comparison with that to be 

 enjoyed on the moors : 



*What are your great, big, fat, lazy English 

 hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have 

 the food brought to their very mouth in preserves, 

 and are out of breath with five minutes' scamper 

 among themselves — to the middle-sized, hard-hipped, 

 wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded mawkins of 

 Scotland, that scorn to taste a leaf of a single 

 cabbage in the wee moorland yardie that shelters 

 them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing 

 every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired 

 as young eagles ringing the sky for pastime, and 

 before the dogs seem not so much scouring for life 

 as for pleasure, with such an air of freedom, 

 liberty, and independence, as they fling up the 

 moss and cock their fuds in the faces of their 

 pursuers? Yet stanch are they to the spine — strong 

 in bone and sound in bottom — see, see how Tickler 

 clears that twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang 



49 G 



