c 



406 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



frost, also, is at least six weeks. Still, in the season in which I visited 

 him, he killed twenty brace of foxes up to the 5th of April, which must 

 be considered a fair share of sport, making allowance for circumstances , 

 by which the character and performance of all hounds and their hunts- 

 men should be judged. 



Previously to Lord Kelburne, Sir David Baird hunted these countries ; 

 and after him, Mr. Oswald, of Shieldhall, to whom it will be recollected 

 1 sent a huntsman, named Butler, — commonly called Shock, when in the 

 service of the late Earl of Derby — who gave much satisfaction the first 

 year, but I never heard of him afterwards. The hounds had then three 

 kennels — one at the mouth of the river Doare, in Ayrshire, where they 

 remained in the non-hunting months ; one at Cathcart, three miles south 

 of Glasgow ; and another, given to them by Sir John Maxwell, of Pollock, 

 ten miles distant from Glasgow to the eastward. 



I will now give my opinion of Lord Kelburne's hounds in a few words, 

 iind it shall be an honest one. I thought them, to the eye, equal to, if 

 not superior to, any other in Scotland. And why should they not be so? 

 They are the blood of two of the most celebrated kennels in England — 

 the Lambton and the Beaufort, chiefly the former; but of their steadiness 

 I cannot say so much. I found from his lordship — the theory is beau- 

 tiful, but the practice, unfortunately, is inadmissable; the attempt, how- 

 ever, is most creditable — that he had all but abolished the use of the lash 

 for the two previous seasons, by which means his pack had got a- head of 

 him, as all fox-hounds will do, and the higher they are bred the more so. 

 He had, however, altered his system, and, from letters I received from 

 him, the following season — for the friendship Lord Kelburne honoured 

 me with, by no means ceased with my visit to him— I found he had got 



