230 THE NEW FOREST 



the straight hunting horn that ever I have 

 listened to. He was no mean musician, and, 

 I believe, played the violoncello well, and in 

 his earlier days was possessed of a beautiful 

 tenor voice. Even in his old age in the New 

 Forest days it was worth listening to in after- 

 dinner songs, often of the Dibdin type. But he, 

 unlike any else I have heard, put his musical 

 soul into the battered old straight horn that he 

 carried, and the melody that he contrived to 

 throw into the notes that he produced from that 

 " wonderful and ancient piece " (like Captain 

 Costigan's hairbrush) was a revelation to many 

 a man who was accustomed to hear an ordinary 

 huntsman blowing his hounds out of covert with 

 a similar instrument. It was in Mr, Collier's first 

 season with us that he had that extraordinary 

 drag hunt on the line of an otter that he has 

 described so well in his chapter of the Badminton 

 volume on Hunting. 



Meeting at the kennels of the foxhounds near 

 Lyndhurst, with the view of hunting down the 

 small river that runs past them to the sea, he 

 struck the drag of an otter up the stream, and, 

 casting round the large mill-pond just above, hit 

 the line where a little runlet comes down from 

 the higher ground. Following this line, hounds 

 led us with a merry cry, away from all water 



