Origin of the Vine Hunt. 33 



wished to ascertain the date whence their existence 

 as a pack of foxhounds might be claimed. Will. Biggs 

 was as like a fox as a man could well be, with sharp 

 twinkling eyes, and a remarkably sly expression of 

 countenance. I believe that he had been a clever 

 huntsman. There was a story that, after he had killed 

 nineteen foxes in succession, Mr. Chute turned him 

 off for missing the twentieth. I need scarcely add 

 that this was a mere joke, and that there were more 

 valid reasons for discharging him. The old man 

 looked back with great regard to this early pack, and 

 evidently considered it to consist of more powerful and 

 effective hounds than those which Mr. Chute after- 

 wards bred. 



I do not know exactly when Mr. Chute first began 

 to keep harriers. In one of Nimrod's letters in the 

 Sporting Magazine (April 1824), he speaks of him as 

 having been a master of hounds from a boy. This can 

 scarcely be literally true ; because Mr. Chute had been 

 no * home-keeping youth,' but had spent his early 

 years at Harrow and Cambridge, and on the Con- 

 tinent. It is certain, however, that he had kept 

 harriers during his father's lifetime, and, I think, equally 

 certain that he began to change them into foxhounds 

 very soon after succeeding to the property in 1790. 

 In the same article of the magazine it is stated, that 

 Mr. Chute had at that time been a master of fox- 

 hounds for thirty-two years. This would take us back 

 to the hunting season of 179 1-2. As Mr. Apperly 

 lived for two or three years near the Vine, I have 

 little doubt that he obtained this date from Mr. Chute 

 himself; and it agrees very well with the date which 

 I should arrive at by the following calculation. Ac- 



D 



