1 2 Recollections of the Vine Htint. 



In the first place, the earlier hour at which they 

 hunted, often leaving the kennel in the dark, and 

 reaching the cover's side soon after daybreak, made 

 it easy for them to find all the foxes that were in the 

 country. If one only had been moving about the 

 cover during the night, they were sure to get on his 

 drag, and, if he was anywhere above ground, could 

 scarcely fail to find him. It is not too much to say 

 that the present generation hunt during altogether a 

 different portion of the twenty-four hours from that 

 used by their great grandfathers. Now the majority 

 of foxes are found after twelve o'clock ; then the ma- 

 jority had been either killed or lost before that hour. 

 It was towards the close of the last century, when the 

 hour of meeting was probably nine o'clock, that an old 

 sporting yeoman, who had hunted with three succes- 

 sive Lords Craven, was heard to express in coarse lan- 

 guage the indignation which he conceived the first of 

 them would feel if he could look out of his grave 

 and see his degenerate descendants going out at so 

 late an hour. ' We,' he added, ' took care to be by 

 the cover's side by peep of day ; and we went home 

 again to dinner before one o'clock, and so we got a 

 good long afternoon for drinking.' 



Next we must take into account how much less 

 frequently a second fox was required. Hounds were 

 slower, and horses were slower, and, accordingly, the 

 average of runs must have been longer. They neither 

 killed nor lost their fox so quickly as modern packs 

 do. They must often have had two or three hours' 

 running by eleven o'clock. But even if the run had 

 been shorter, I believe that, after killing one fox with 

 fair sport, our ancestors were seldom disposed to draw 



