TWO GOOD DAYS IN 1889 59 



month for scent, yet foxes are on the travel, and 

 should hounds hit off the line of one of these gay 

 Lotharios, the chances are they score a quick, 

 straight run, for blow which 

 way the wind may, a dog- 

 fox at this season of the 

 year will travel back to 

 his own ground. On the 

 Lincolnshire border of the Cottes- 

 more country there is a chain of 

 coverts lying between Colsterworth 

 and Bourne, which are neutral for this pack and 

 the Belvoir. It is ground associated with good 

 sport seen in the past, situated in an unpopulated, 

 low-farmed district, a capital country to visit at 

 the end of the season, when more forward arable 

 lands are closed to sport on the score of damage 

 to crops. Essentially a woodland day, for there 

 are vast tracts of forest lying between Colsterworth 

 and Bourne, it is none the less enjoyable and 

 always associated with good hound work. By the 

 older school of sportsmen, who preferred hunting 

 to steeplechasing, these districts were in high favour 

 with a pack Hke the Cottesmore. Quick, determined, 

 and persevering, there is plenty of scope to show the 

 worth of their breeding when unravelHng the line 

 of a stout woodland fox. 



The fixture is on the cross-roads known as 

 Corby Birkholme, a point about fifteen miles distant 

 from either Oakham, Grantham, Stamford, or 

 Bourne. Some one who found himself there, and 

 had the locality fully described, went so far as to 

 ask "if the spot was in England?" Borderland 

 describes it best, but there used to be an old gentle- 

 man living at the house on the cross-roads, by 

 name Mr. Wilkinson, ready with a hearty welcome 



