AND STIRLINGSHIRE HUNT 



and a half, however, the hounds came to a check 

 in a road which would have been a fatal one but 

 for the following circumstance. As Lord Hope- 

 toun and myself were in the act of leaping a low 

 wall into the road, his lordship exclaimed to me, 

 ' There is the scent,' — catching with his eye, what 

 escaped mine, namely, two couples of hounds carry- 

 ing it down a strip of plantations, on the opposite 

 side of the road. Clapping spurs to my horse, I 

 gave Scott the office, and he instantly brought the 

 body of the pack on the line, but they soon threw 

 up again. Having an eye to his point, how^ever, 

 he persisted in pursuing the line, even beyond 

 what appeared to me to be warrantable, as not 

 a hound even feathered on a scent ; but he was 

 rewarded for his perseverance. He had the 

 pleasure of seeing his hounds take up the scent 

 all at once through a gate, into a grass field, 

 and never quit it till they ran into their fox at 

 the end of forty minutes, an hour in all, over 

 a fine scenting country," ^ 



Nimrod's comments on the hounds and Hunt 

 servants too are interesting, and while he does 

 not seem to have been favourably impressed with 

 the appearance of the former as a pack, he 

 nevertheless casts no aspersions on their working 

 qualities, but rather extols these. 



" The general character of the Linlithgow pack 

 may, I think, be summed up in a few words. They 

 are not hounds to strike the eye, or exactly perhaps 



1 'Northern Tour,' 1838, p. 213 et seq. 



131 



