224 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



sport which I have never seen anywhere else. Im- 

 mense flocks of wild geese are in the habit, from 

 September till April, of feeding on some large graz- 

 in"- meadows by the side of the Severn, called the 

 New Grounds, and the geese in their coming and 

 croino- never vary above a day or two, but are as sure 

 to arrive, in small numbers at first, as the month in 

 the year comes round. I have almost killed myself 

 with laughter at what I have seen, when Lord Fitz- 

 hardinge takes the field, on what is really a wild 

 goose chase ! Conceive his lordship, followed by a 

 string of six or seven men, guests and keepers, and 

 crawling along in the mud beneath the Severn's 

 bank ; the ilocks of geese being on the meadows, and 

 about to be driven over his head. They may have 

 to creep dovv^n to the bank of the Severn, under cover 

 of a hed2:e, in a field filled with fat oxen inclined for 

 a lark, or sleek and wanton heifers. The bovine 

 attention all at once becomes curiously fixed on the 

 strinsf of men crawlino* all-fours, and the herd ad- 

 vance upon the crawlers, not quite sure whether they 

 are men or dogs. The last man in the line perhaps is 

 a guest, who, being a predestinarian, and born under 

 the sign " Taurus," religiously believes, after his 

 fashion, that his end is to be on the horns of a mad 

 bull — and he is therefore horrified when a huge 

 Durham crossed ox, or one of the old Gloucester- 

 shire breed, with horns nearly as wide as the Spanish 

 cattle, and with points to them like the brow-antlers 

 of a deer, leading on his fellows, smells to him won- 

 deringly from beliind. The guest is on the point 

 of shrieking, to the entire frustration of the day's 

 sport, when the leading ox gives a short grunt, or 

 playfully constrained bellow, approaching to a very 



