HUNT SERVANTS— THEIR DUTIES 205 



The use of the horn is, in hare-hunting, by no means 

 so frequent or so necessary as in fox-hunting.* A good 

 huntsman will take care not to sound it unduly, as 

 some men do, apparently for the mere purpose of 

 making cheerful sounds. I love the sound of a horn 

 as much as any man ; there is to me something inex- 

 pressibly inspiring in it, as there is in hound music. 

 But in hare-hunting you can easily have too much of it. 

 Some few Masters, especially with foot packs, hold 

 that the horn is unnecessary and only distracts hounds. 

 I confess I do not share that opinion. I believe that 

 at times, even with harriers and beagles, the horn is 

 very useful, especially in getting hounds out of wood- 

 lands and in cases of riot, or when hounds are running 

 heel or have split and are following two hares. And 

 where the pack is entirely at fault, and the huntsman 

 has made up his mind to go to a holloa which he knows 

 to be a reliable one, a few blasts from his horn are 

 useful in getting hounds to him and hurrying them 

 on at best speed to the point from whence the holloa 

 proceeds. For these and other reasons, I believe in 

 accustoming harriers and beagles to the sound of the 

 horn, and in the huntsman seeing that, with the assist- 

 ance of the whip, they come quickly to him when he 

 uses it. In the matter of lifting hounds, the huntsman 

 will, of course, not fail to remember that golden rule, 



* Occasionally even a fox-hunting huntsman has been 

 known to ride without a horn. " Nimrod," in his Yorkshire 

 Tour, of 1827, mentions " Old Carter," huntsman to Sir 

 Tatton Sykes. " I was much pleased," he says, " with his 

 venerable appearance, his grey locks denoting many years 

 experience in his profession. ... he was not without his 

 peculiarities and prejudices — one of which was that he never 

 carried a hunting-horn." I have myself known a harrier 

 Master who had a strong objection to the horn ; and, for a 

 season or two, his huntsman never carried one. 



