THE OLD-TIME HAREHOUND 63 



to be set off, as well as that grand music which still 

 renders a good pack of Old English Harriers — de- 

 scendants of the Southern hound — a real delight 

 to listen to on a winter's day. Nimrod, who was 

 one of the rapid sportsmen of the first quarter of the 

 nineteenth century, when everything had to be fast 

 and " slap-up," led the fashion in that contempt for 

 hare-hunting which so long flourished among these 

 gentry. He refers to the " old psalm-singing harrier," 

 and manifestly inculcated, whenever and wherever 

 possible, the doctrine that the modem harrier ought 

 to be of pure foxhound blood. Even at the present 

 time the mischief done by Nimrod and men of his 

 school has not by any means entirely vanished. The 

 late Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, who speaks up 

 warmly for the harrier in the Badminton Library 

 volume on Hunting, tells an amusing story of the 

 courtly sneer of the late Mr. George Lane Fox, the 

 famous Master of the Bramham Moor Foxhounds, 

 when asked his opinion on hare-hunting. The Squire 

 of Bramham was one of the old school — Nimrod's 

 school — and his reply was : "I have always under- 

 stood it to be a most scientific amusement." As 

 Lord Suffolk well says : " There is many a true word 

 spoke sarcastic.'''' 



The Northern hound, whose ancestral headquarters 

 seem to have been chiefly in that sporting county, 

 Yorkshire, differed widely from his Southern cousin. 

 He is described by Markham, who flourished in the 

 time of Elizabeth and even earlier, as having " a head 

 more slender, with a longer nose, ears and flews more 

 shallow, back broad, belly gaunt, joints long, tail 

 small, and his general form more slender and greyhound 

 like. But the virtues of these Yorkshire hounds," 

 continues Markham, " I can praise no further than 



