26 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



marvel to me why, in the present establishment at Berkeley 

 Castle, where the old livery, on account of the ancient halls, had 

 a right to shine in all its wonted brilliancy, it should not have 

 been kept up. To show the increase of packs of hounds in 

 the last eighty or hundred years, my father used to hunt all 

 the country from Kensington Gardens to Berkeley Castle and 

 Bristol. Scratch Wood, a cover close to Wormwood Scrubs, 

 was the nearest cover to London ; but I have heard old Tom 

 Oldaker say, that, while with my father, he found a fox in 

 Scratch Wood, and lost him in the rough ground and cover in 

 Kensington Gardens. There was a kennel at Cranford, I believe 

 a kennel at Gerrard's Cross in my father's time, and I know 

 there was one at Nettlebed. Where else the hounds used to 

 put up in that wide stretch of country I know not, but I sup- 

 pose occasionally at inns. The tawny coat was only worn by 

 the huntsmen and whippers-in, and the difference of the remark- 

 able colour I have since found to be of the utmost advantage to 

 hounds. When all are in red, the hound's eye, if a hound is 

 thrown out, cannot direct him at once to his huntsman, his nose 

 is his chief dependence ; but if the men are in a different hue, 

 which stands out peculiarly from the rest, a hound at a mile 

 distance will come the shortest way to where his presence is 

 required. I had an opportunity to observe the effect of the 

 bright tawny coat on pheasants. One day I went in my hunt- 

 ing dress to feed them in a cover close to the kennel, and ever 

 after that, the instant they saw the remarkable dress that had 

 once brought them their food, they would follow it even to the 

 kennel door. I turned their fondness for the colour to some 

 advantage, for there were many very old hens in that cover past 

 breeding and changing to the " male " plumage, the plumage of 

 what is erroneously called the mule bird, and they would ap- 

 proach me so nearly in this dress when I went to feed them, that 

 I snared them all off with a wire on a stick about six feet long. 



I whipped-in for some time to my brother Moreton, assisted 

 by the late Mr. Henry Wombwell, who also wore the tawny 

 coat, but when I married and purchased a house near the park 



