238 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



just alive, but unable to stand or see. In spite of this 

 extraordinary period of starvation and exposure the 

 bitch recovered both her health and good looks.* 

 As illustrating the extraordinary lack of scent in a 

 squatting hare, I make one more quotation from Mr. 

 Nesfield's diary. " Thursday, 23rd October (1873). 

 Elton ; had a capital run and kUl ; one hour thirty- 

 five minutes. It was a soaking rain. . . . She clapped 

 (squatted), and I watched no less than four or five 

 hounds actually tread on her without finding her out. 

 Not a particle of scent till in motion." 



Mr. Hawkins, whose harriers I have already men- 

 tioned, sends me a brief note of a very fine run with 

 his pack in Northamptonshire in 1902. This took 

 place in the territory of the Grafton and Pytchley 

 Hunts, some of the very finest fox-hunting country 

 in Britain. After killing a brace of hares in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Stowe Nine Churches, where they met, 

 his harriers put up a stout jack hare in Heyford parish. 

 Him they hunted at a fast pace by the village of Stowe, 

 thence along the northern side of Stowe Wood. Breast- 

 ing the hill above Weedon hounds left that place on 

 their right and, racing down the hill over Everdon 

 Vale, puUed down their hare a mUe short of Badby 

 Wood. " The distance as the crow flies was seven 

 miles, and the pace was good throughout." I know 

 this country well, and the Grafton followers would 

 esteem themselves lucky if they had chased and killed 

 a fox over such a line. 



In Gloucestershire, Mr. J. S. Gibbons's harriers, the 

 " Boddington," show excellent sport. Many good 

 runs with points of five miles or so, writes Mr. Gibbons, 

 have been enjoyed during his mastership of the coun- 



* This case is authenticated in " A Third of a Century 

 with the High Peak Harriers," p, 40. 



