I o Recollections of the Vine Htmt. 



neutral covers which continue to be drawn by dif- 

 ferent packs. 



It must, however, be admitted that, on the other 

 hand, there were instances of the same pack occupy- 

 ing large tracts of country for a long period. The 

 foundations of the Craven country must have been 

 laid a hundred and forty years ago by Fulwar 

 Lord Craven ; and as he and his two next successors 

 kept the hounds for about half a century continuously, 

 their family influence and long possession enabled 

 them to draw together the extensive country which 

 they bequeathed to the members of the Craven Hunt. 

 But I imagine that much of this was acquired gra- 

 dually ; for if Fulwar Lord Craven had occupied it 

 all, he would scarcely have brought his hounds to 

 Dummer, as he certainly did, about the middle of the 

 last century. Nor is this the only instance of packs 

 thus migrating from one distant quarter to another ; 

 for a gentleman is still living who remembers Lord 

 Stawell bringing his hounds from his home country 

 near Farnham to Andover. It is probable that, though 

 foxes were plentiful in some districts, yet they were 

 not then spread so equably over the whole country as 

 they are in these days of artificial preserving. The 

 venerable founder of the H. H., Mr. Ridge, is said 

 to have kept hounds for forty-six years (from 1749 to 

 1795), and to have hunted from Farnham to Romsey. 

 It was an extraordinary length of time for the same 

 person to have hunted the same country, and it 

 spread over nearly the whole period that the three 

 successive Lords Craven kept their hounds ; but I 

 believe there is no doubt of the fact, and that the 

 books of the H. H. contain authentic evidence of it. 



