HISTORY OF THE LINLITHGOW 



must then have been comparatively open in 

 character, and therefore foxes and consequently 

 hounds may possibly have run straighter than 

 they do at the present time. It is stated^ that 

 about the year 1820 Linlithgowshire, as a hunt- 

 ing country, was decidedly in every respect to be 

 preferred to the counties of Edinburgh and Had- 

 dington ; that it held a remarkably good scent 

 at all seasons of the year ; that it consisted, for 

 a provincial, of a very fair proportion of grass, 

 and that it was "a flat and very pleasant and 

 straightforward one to ride over " ; while Nimrod, 

 who visited the country in 1834, mentions^ that it 

 was then considered the best in Scotland. In those 

 days, however, it was much less intersected than it 

 is now, for although the Union or Forth and Clyde 

 canal was completed in 1822, there were no rail- 

 ways and few mineral works — the lines from Edin- 

 burgh to Glasgow by Linlithgow and by Bathgate, 

 and to Carstairs having been opened subsequently 

 to the year 1840, and the production of shale-oil 

 not having become an industry in West Lothian 

 until about the year 1850. Nor had wire then 

 begun to show itself as it has since, creeping snake- 

 like over the land and renderino^ more than one 

 district and many hundreds of acres of good old 

 grass practically unfit for the chase. 



Since the beginning, the Linlithgow and Stirling- 

 shire Hounds have hunted no fewer than twelve 



1 'Sporting Magazine,' December 1828. 



2 ' Nimrod's Northern Tour,' 1838, p. 208. 



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