130 NliMHOD'S NOiiTHERN TOUit. 



Beckford properly remarks, that he can easily conceive a fox-hound to 

 be too low-bred to be good in chase, but the reverse was to him irrecon- 

 cilable, and so it is to me. What is meant by a high-bred fox-hound 

 but one the most highly refined , and therefore the most perfect, of his 

 species ? As for myself, I never will believe but that, at the end of ten 

 minutes, best pace, the high-bred fox-hound, at a ticklish point, is 

 worth half a dozen Towlers and Jowlers with their tongues out, and dead 

 blown. But they — i. e. the high-bred ones — are apt to be " a leetle in 

 a hurry," as Tom Rose said of his, and will now and then overrun the 

 point, with a crowd of horsemen at their heels. As far however as my 

 observation carried me, the duke's hounds stand pressing about as well 

 as most others do at the present day. " I care not whose they are,'* 

 Tom Wingfield used to say, " they will all fly over it now and then." 



In cover. I have heard it said, and I have read in print, that these 

 hounds are rather slack in facing strong gorse covers. I must say I 

 saw nothing of the sort ; but shall presently produce a fact quite au con- 

 traire. Without a scent, I call them very fair drawers ; with a scent, 

 the strongest gorse in Roxburghshire will not stop them out, and I here 

 speak from facts. On this part of my subject, then, I need not add 

 more than that the sportsman who is not satisfied with the performance 

 of the Duke of Buccleuch's hounds — not quite faultless perhaps — in the 

 field, must be very diflicult to please; and still more fastidious must be the 

 eye which is not delighted with their appearance in the kennel. They 

 may be said to want nothing but a better country, for from what I saw 

 and heard of that hunted from the Dalkeith kennel — the East Lothain 

 — it is very so-so. On this subject, however, the less said the better; 

 for if there were to be no fox-hounds kept except in good countries, 

 there would not, according with some persons' estimation of them, be 



