232 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



Silverly, near Newmarket, before Mr. Bryant's harriers. 

 The pack that day consisting of six couples only. There 

 was a big field out. With this stag these harriers ran 

 over a stiff country for a distance reckoned at twenty 

 miles and, pulling him down, killed him. The pace 

 must have been more than good, for of the horses 

 following two were kiUed outright, while others were 

 not expected to recover. Somehow or other in those 

 days hunting-men killed their horses far more fre- 

 quently than is the case at present. Whether they 

 rode them unfit, or whether, as I am inclined to think, 

 they pushed them more recklessly and more unmer- 

 cifully than they do now, it is certain that a large 

 number of horses died in the hunting-field each winter. 

 Such a thing is comparatively rare nowadays. For 

 one thing, I believe riders are more humane, and a 

 beaten horse is not ridden and spurred to his last gasp 

 as used to be the case. 



Before I quit the subject of harriers and deer, I 

 will mention a good run with a Ward Union deer, in 

 which my friend, Mr. W. Dove, and his pack, the Tara 

 Harriers, took a leading part. This was in the season 

 of 1898-99. " An occasional outlying deer was," 

 writes Mr. Dove, " left out on our side of the country, 

 and, being rather too far for the Wards to come for 

 it, the Master used to give me leave to hunt them. This 

 we did with much success, having one really great run 

 in my first season, from Corbalton Hall vid Sclater's 

 Gorse, Kilmoor, and Newton Sticks, to beyond Ash- 

 bourne, when she jumped up from a ditch. From there 

 she ran in view through the village of Ashbourne ; on 

 then past the Ward kennels, where she evidently tried 

 to get into the paddock, over the Sutherland farm, as 

 if for Lagore, vid Creakenstown. Here a hare got up 

 in front of hounds and, getting through wire, we could 



