2 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



certainty of gentlemen getting well away in the one case, and the 

 chance of not getting away at all in the other. 



In a quick thing with hounds, a good start is everything ; and in 

 Leicestershire it is our own fault if we do not get it. This advantage, 

 however, is too often abused. Mr. Meynell was once heard to describe 

 a run, and he began thus : " The fox came out of the gorse close to 

 my horse's heels, then came Cecil Forester, then my hounds." 



These artificial coverts being, of course, properly arranged as to 

 distance from each other, a burst is secured. If the fox live to reach 

 one of them, a check for a minute or two may take place ; but this 

 check may be beneficial to the sport of the day. Hounds and horses 

 get a puff, tail hounds come up, and those who were not fortunate 

 in getting away with the pack, secure a place. The fox, finding 

 delays are dangerous, and that he has nothing for it but to fly, 

 makes his point for some distant earths, the attainment of which 

 nothing but death will prevent. 



Having said this, it is not to be wondered at, that, besides being 

 encroached upon by other hounds, Leicestershire, though a small 

 county, should contain three packs of fox-hounds, which are attended 

 by the best and hardest riders in England ; to which it may be 

 added, without any reflection upon other establishments, that no 

 other country could find such hounds to ride to. "What benefit 

 must they derive from such a country ! 



To say nothing of the benefit arising from hounds being never out 

 of the sight of the huntsman and whippers-in, unless (as it some- 

 times has happened) they run away from them, there is another 

 advantage which it enjoys above all others ; and that is, when, at the 

 end of the season — from the effect of long-continued drought, aided 

 perhaps by harsh cutting winds and hot sun, all others, where 

 fallows are to be hunted over, are hard and dry, and incapable of 

 holding a scent, or being ridden over with safety either to a horse 

 or his rider — this county is as capable of shewing a run as at 

 any other period of the season. As a proof of what I have said, I 

 have only to mention a day's sport which I saw when Mr. Smith 

 [the Tom Smith) had the Quorn hounds, which, I have no doubt, is 

 fresh in the recollection of many who witnessed it, for it was a 

 brilliant one, and such as no other country in the world could have 



