APPENDIX III. 



LETTERS 

 KELATIVE TO THE PROPRIETORSHIP OF THE HOUNDS. 



1857. 



Mr GiLLON to Mr Sandilands. 



Wallhouse, 1st April 1857. 

 MY DEAR SANDILANDS, 



When we met the other day at the New Club, you 

 asked me to send you my views in writing on the subject of the 

 proprietorship of the L. S. Hounds, and when I now do so, I am 

 expressing the feelings of many of the landed proprietors in the 

 country hunted ; in fact, all to whom I have spoken on the 

 subject. Many of them are certainly not hunting men, but they 

 are interested in, and their coverts are regularly drawn by the 

 hounds. 



In giving my views, I may again repeat, that I am actuated 

 by no motives but those of interest in the Hunt, and its future 

 prospects and welfare, and that I consider it most desirable that 

 the above point be satisfactorily settled before another season 

 commences, or as soon as this ends. I need only refer to 

 two letters I showed you, to account for my withdrawal of sub- 

 scription for two years ; and it was from the latter of the two, 

 dated 22nd September 1855, that I, for the first time, became 

 aware that the fox-hounds were claimed for Mrs Ramsay as her 

 private property. My knowledge of the history of these hounds 

 can only reach back to 1824, when Johnston and my father hunted 

 them. In 1828, they made them over to Mr Hay of Dunse 

 Castle, who, in 1830, handed them over to Mr Ramsay, as he 

 had received them, the L. S. subscription pack. No money was 



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