The Staghound. 1 19 



with the general surroundings of all these hounds no 

 fault can be found. 



In England Lord de Rothschild's may be men- 

 tioned as a strong pack, numbering about thirty 

 couples of hounds, and they are kennelled at Ascott, 

 near Leighton, in Bedfordshire. The Enfield Chase 

 liKewise have twenty-three and a half couples of 

 entered hounds, and the Surrey twenty-five couples, 

 and whose country being round about Redhill, and 

 pretty handy for the Londoner, usually produces 

 larger meets of riding men than some of the 

 neighbouring farmers like. 



There is a pack of twenty-five and a half couples, 

 and a very old one, that still hunts the New Forest ; 

 and a capital centre for the visitor to work from is 

 Lyndhurst or Brockenhurst. Captain Lovell, on 

 his retirement in 1893, ^^^ hunted these hounds 

 for upwards of forty years, w^hen they were but 

 known as the New Forest Deerhounds. It need 

 scarcely be said here that the deerhound is a 

 different animal altogether. Captain Lovell's last 

 meet as master was about a record one, for a 

 '' royal " was killed after running some sixteen miles 

 in about an hour and a half. The New Forest 

 Hounds hunt both the wild fallow and red deer, the 

 former annually until the first week in May. As 

 there are comparatively few red deer in the forest, 



