THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 205 



forty couples, all together; and the turning up of a full- 

 grown young fox, after a merry brush across the coun- 

 try, on some fine morning early in October, makes a 

 desirable sensation upon the pack, of which you will 

 find they have retained a lively impression, when next 

 required to '' come away, away." Where you have not 

 the advantage of large woodland, cub-hunting is often 

 as completely stopped by drought as the regular hunt- 

 ing is, subsequently, by frost. A good ground-rain in 

 September and October, makes all the difference. It is 

 folly to put hounds on scent when the ground is hard as 

 iron, as it only serves long enough to send them home 

 lamed and shaken all over. In the season of 1828-29, 

 if I remember right, so long did we lack moisture that 

 no hounds could take the field for regular hunting till 

 the 17th of November. The Oakley Club met, as was 

 the custom, in the first week of that month, at the 

 Cock, at Eaton Socon ; but the most agreeable sequel 

 to those dinners was, on the following morning, neces- 

 sarily adjourned, sine die; the deep holding clay of the 

 capital country about Eoxton spinneys being of a con- 

 sistency too hard for the finest of young English gen- 

 tlemen of that day, however well inclined they might 

 have been, with those of the present, for " going it like 

 bricks."'" Such times and seasons try the patience of 

 masters of hounds, anxious for their credit ; but as old 

 Wise, of Southampton, was wont to observe, *' There's 

 a deal of luck in all these things." If you are balked 

 * Vide song — " The fine young English gentleman,"— last verse. 



