GENTLY WITH THAT HORN! 103 



exceedingly good -mannered man. No huntsman was better 

 seconded than I was with him ; he was a better first whipper-in 

 than Tom Skinner, while the latter was the best second whipper-in 

 I ever saw. As a huntsman I felt myself in clover, for my men 

 knew my habits, each understood his duty, and when running a 

 fox in Yardley Chase, where the quarters were very large, and 

 the rides wide apart (there is a circular drive through the con- 

 tinuous woods not far short of seventeen miles long), each under- 

 stood the other by a touch of the horn. And now as to the 

 horn. A vast number of gentlemen and professional huntsmen 

 imagine that it is a sort of trumpet to assist only in making a 

 noise ; in fact, I have with packs of hounds heard two horns 

 going at once. I have seen, not far from Northampton, master 

 and man blowing each other black in the face ; and, not far from 

 Gloucester, the huntsman, very properly, with the leading 

 hounds blowing his horn "to get 'em to gather:' 1 and the 

 master of the hounds, a mile behind, blowing his trumpet to the 

 tail hounds : the effect of this was to stop all intermediate 

 hounds, and make them pause as to which way the head lay. 

 There should be but one horn heard at the same time, and 

 master and man should have particular notes understood by each 

 other when the voice was beyond hearing. For instance, in 

 Yardley Chase a single note on the horn from George Carter or 

 Tom Skinner, told me the hounds were over a ride and into a 

 fresh quarter, and the same from me to them. If either of us 

 doubled the notes it conveyed to the others that the hounds 

 were away from one particular wood into another, and if con- 

 tinuously doubled then gone away over the open. By a hunts- 

 man the horn should never be used unless imperatively necessary ; 

 if used too much the hounds will become careless of the call. I 

 know a country in which the master of the hounds uses his horn 

 for ever in drawing, and this horn draws every cover in the 

 vale within hearing. The foxes there know the trumpet as well 

 as a cock pheasant knows the whistle of a shooter to his dog in 

 the last month of the season, and there is not a gamekeeper 

 there who does not know that when this horn is heard in his 



