i6o HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



I have ever met — who has in his time tested every 

 phase of sport in Ireland, and an extract may, perhaps, 

 give some idea of the more unorthodox methods I have 

 hinted at. " I have forgotten," he says, " the year 



I took over the harriers, but it must have been 



about 1873 or 1874. I absolutely knew nothing about 

 hounds at the time, but I was talked into it by men 

 who didn't care a rap what sort of master they had, 

 so long as they got some one to keep the thing going 

 for the £100 a year which was promised. The first 

 pack I got together were composed principally of an 

 extremely nondescript lot I bought from a man at 

 Longford who shall be nameless. They had evidently 

 been used to run drag, and were a wild, quarrelsome 

 lot of brutes. Added to these, drafts from two or 

 three kennels made up a pack which only an igno- 

 ramus like myself would have fed for two days. How 

 I got through that season I don't know, but I hope 

 my subscribers liked it ! Next season I made a 

 somewhat better effort and bought a pack from a 

 Mr. Blennerhassett, from somewhere in Kerry. There 

 were really some very nice hounds in this lot, more 

 than a half being a sort of badger-pied, evidently a 

 cross with the Kerry beagle ; but they were really 

 good hunters, and I managed to account for a good 

 many hares with them before parting with the hounds 

 three years later. After an interval of two seasons 

 I again took the hounds, but as the late master had 

 not kept them up in any sort of way I shot most of 

 them and started afresh. This time I went in for 

 small foxhounds, getting them chiefly from the Duke 

 of Buccleugh's pack and the Fife, then in the hands of 

 Capt. Anstruther Thomson. 



" For some seasons I got some very handsome 

 under-sized hounds from the latter and had with them 



