398 NTMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



which it would be well for him not to possess. It is a dangerous acquire- 

 ment in any man, and justifiable in very few ; for where there is no 

 perception of error, there is no hope of improvement. 



Of Abercairney's country lean say little from my own personal know- 

 ledo-e of it. Tt comprehends the whole of the vale of Strathearn, with 

 the exception of a small portion to the east of the river May, which 

 belongs to the Fife, and it extends to the westward until it joins Mr. 

 Ramsay's country near Dunblane. The part I saw of it was coarse, 

 but still, although interrupted by a strong river, not incapable of showing 

 a day's sport with a fox that would put his head straight for his point, 

 and ^0 on. Abercairney showed me a line of country over which one fox 

 led him, that must have been a choker to hounds, horses, and men- 

 partaking of that wildness once considered a principal feature in a sport 

 which has now, in the opinion of some persons, degenerated into the 

 opposite extreme. It is beyond a doubt, indeed, that in some countries 

 that I could name, and those considered crack ones, fox-hunting may 

 be charged with the chief objection to hare-hunting— namely, the 

 ringing nature of the chase, which induced the facetious Mr. Leche, of 

 Cheshire fox-hunting fame, to say, that " harriers never run out of 

 the parish in which they find their game." Still, Arber told me, that, 

 wild as it appears to be, and in many parts really is, and choking as 

 may be the hills, it is not so severe for horses as that hunted by Mr. 

 Wyndham, over some part of which he declared no horse yet foaled could 

 live forty minutes with hounds after a good fox, and with a breast-high 

 scent. This is corroborative of an assertion made by myself, several 

 years back, and founded on some experience of it, that no country that 

 I had ever followed hounds over, puts the physical powers of the horse 



