. A GLANCE AT ENGLISH PACKS 143 



miles of country in the vicinity of Rottingdean, where 

 they were kennelled. This country is partly down, 

 partly arable land, and is unvexed by wire. For 

 many years this excellent pack had been in the possession 

 of the Beard family, the last Master, Mr. Steyning 

 Beard, having controlled them since 1870. Resigning 

 at the end of 1901-2, Mr. Beard was succeeded by 

 Mr. E. Helme, who hunted the pack himself.* These 

 hounds consisted of twenty-five couples of twenty-one- 

 inch cross-bred harriers (entered in the harrier Stud- 

 book), which showed capital sport. The Iping harriers, 

 hunting a beautiful country about Midhurst, formerly 

 hunted over by the defunct Goodwood foxhounds, con- 

 sist of eighteen and a half couples of twenty-one-inch 

 pure foxhounds. They were established in 1893, and 

 are owned by Sir Edward Hamilton, of Iping House, 

 whose son, Mr. E. A. W. Hamilton, acts as Master. 



Proceeding along the South Coast we come, just 

 before the Hampshire border, to Lady Gifford's harriers, 

 which hunt from Old Park, Chichester. Lady Gifford 

 is one of the few ladies who hunt as well as master 

 their own hounds. First getting together a pack of 

 harriers in Northumberland in 1894, she migrated 

 South in 1897, and took up her present quarters. Her 

 pack consists of twenty-three and a half couples of 

 seventeen-inch harriers, which, in the varied country 

 about Chichester, afford excellent sport. Hunting is a 

 tradition in the Gifford family. An old Lord Gifford 

 is said to have been the original of Lord Scamperdale 

 in " Sponge's Sporting Tour." A brother of the 



* The Brookside Harriers have been recently given up. The 

 country is now to be amalgamated with that of the Brighton 

 Harriers, and for the future Major Welch, Master of that pack, 

 will hunt the whole. The style of his hounds will^ henceforth, 

 be "The Brighton and Brookside Harriers." 



