AND STIRLINGSHIRE HUNT 



promising to do his best to show sport and 

 please every one.^ In his endeavours to do so 

 he was ably backed by his fellow -members of the 

 Hunt committee — Colonel Gillon, Colonel Shairp, 

 Colonel M'Barnet, Mr James Hope, and Lord 

 Hopetoun, who, on his acceptance of office in 

 1880, was at once apjoointed chairman; while the 

 energy and business capacity of Mr Home, the 

 honorary secretary and treasurer, were then, as 

 they had been during the existence of the Lothians 

 Hunt, always most helpful. 



In consequence of the curtailment of the country 

 it was no longer necessary to maintain the estab- 

 lishment on so large a scale as before, and accord- 

 ingly the pack was reduced from about fifty to 

 about thirty - five couples of working hounds, 

 although in the year 1880 it was again raised to 

 its former strength, mainly through the purchase, 

 at Rugby, of three and a half couples of Lord 

 Coventry's — Croome — hounds, and of eleven and a 

 half of Mr Askew's^ — Northumberland and Berwick- 

 shire — hounds, and through the putting forward 

 of a fair number of young hounds bred at home. 

 At this period very few hounds were bred at 

 Golf hall, perhaps owing to a difficulty in getting 

 satisfactory quarters for them, and it may have 

 been for this reason that Captain Wauchope was 



' Minute-book, vol. i. pp. 161 and 162. 



2 Mr Askew appears to have lent his hounds after the termination 

 of his mastership of the Northumberland and Berwickshire Hunt, 

 in 1871, to his successor, Sir John Marjoribanks. — Vide 'County 

 Gentleman,' 24th April 1880. 



249 



