26o THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



one has enjoyed, if one sits down to write about it 

 while the glamour is still on one, and the large 

 percentage by which an original estimate is reduced 

 by the stern logic of compasses, map, and measuring 

 wheel. 



Anyone who reads through a series of the runs 

 recorded in the Old Sporting Magazine and 

 publications of that date will realise that this 

 tendency rather ran wild, and will be driven, if he 

 accepts all the statements, to the conclusion that 

 the hounds of those days — the early part of the 

 nineteenth century — were at least 30 per cent, faster 

 than anything Leicestershire can produce to-day. 



The reverend chronicler of the doings of the 

 staghounds cannot be absolutely acquitted of 

 possessing the same tendency, for a careful 

 examination of the runs recorded by him will show 

 that some of his estimates of distance were 

 exceedingly wild. On September 13th, 1804, 

 hounds found a stag in Chargot Wood near 

 Luxborough, and ran it via Raleigh's Cross and 

 Chipstable to Highleigh Weir on the Exe below 

 Wonham. A fine run, said to have lasted five 

 hours and forty minutes, but the most liberal allowance 

 for doubling about cannot stretch the distance to 

 fifty-five miles. If the distance had been fifty-five 

 miles they never would have covered it in five hours 

 and forty minutes. The general impression derived, 

 however, from reading these records with the map 

 beside one is that they are on the whole unusually 



