THE PACK. 261 



accurate and trustworthy. The absence of maps — 

 for most of these accounts are older than the 

 pubHcatlon of the first Ordnance Survey, and that 

 was filled with amazing blunders — is quite sufficient 

 to account for a large amount of exaggeration as to 

 distance. 



As far as one can judge the old pack must have 

 been pretty much what one would have expected 

 them to be from the description of them. 



They seem to have lobbed along over the open — 

 especially where there was bad going for horses — at 

 a considerable pace, but to have lost a lot of time in 

 covert — hard oak scrub must have been well-nigh 

 impassable to hounds of that size. 



They probably looked to be going very slowly as 

 they strung along in file through deap heather, 

 solemnly flinging their tongues, but one is accustomed 

 to hear the same criticism of the modern pack from 

 strangers accustomed to a 23-I or 24 inch standard. 

 It is clear, however, that they must have slipped 

 along at a respectable pace, because they killed 

 their deer on quite a fair proportion of the days they 

 went out ; because also these records show that on 

 a really good day they ran away from the great 

 majority of the riders, and because the records of 

 some of the runs, to which no taint of exaggeration 

 appears to attach, would be a credit to any pack of 

 hounds. For example : — 



August 22nd, 1790. Found in Haddon and laid 

 on above Storridge. " He went up the bottom to 



