HISTORY OF THE L. & S. HUNT 



Grace, with the use of his kennels at Amisfield,^ 

 to the Earl of Wemyss, then Lord Elcho, who 

 for ten seasons hunted it along with the Duns 

 country in Berwickshire. In 1843, when his lord- 

 ship accepted the Northumberland country, that 

 of East Lothian was taken over, with the approval 

 of the Duke, by Mr W. R. Ramsay of Barnton, 

 and hunted in conjunction with the Linlithgow and 

 Stirlingshire country until 1848.^ Between 1848 

 and 1853 the country appears to have remained 

 vacant, but in the latter year an arrangement 

 was effected whereby the Fife hounds, of which 

 the Earl of Rosslyn was then master, visited it 

 periodically during the two following seasons. 

 At that time foxes were scarce, and so difficult 

 was it to find one, that Lord Rosslyn was induced 

 to turn to Kildufi' wood, almost the only reliable 

 covert, upon six consecutive hunting days, on 

 each of which he found, a circumstance which 

 may have given rise to the story that, whatever 

 happened to be the fixture, his lordship, after a 

 little formal drawing, would exclaim, " This is 

 all rot, let us go to Kilduff!" 



The termination of the arrangement with Lord 

 Rosslyn and the existence of a very general desire 

 that in the future the country should be hunted 

 by a pack of hounds of its own led to the estab- 



1 The kennels at Amisfield were built by the fifth Duke of Buccleuch 

 in 1829. — Papers at Dalkeith House. 



2 In these years— 1843 to 1848 — Mr Ramsay hunted the East 

 Lothian country from the kennels at Amisfield. 



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