BEAGLES AND BEAGLING 283 



Beg, hunting from Creagh, County Cork, hold the 

 record (twenty-three couples) in point of numbers. 

 A pack of twelve or fourteen couples will show plenty 

 of sport, and very pretty hunting indeed is often to 

 be had with a cry of beagles which numbers in kennel 

 no more than ten couples, all told. With these small 

 packs, of course, two days a week or three days a 

 fortnight is the utmost that can be expected if hounds 

 are to turn out for their work fresh and fit. At the 

 Universities, packs of beagles have been maintained 

 for years by some few Colleges. The Christ Church, 

 Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge, beagles are 

 well known. New and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, 

 have this last season — 1902-03 — combined to put 

 into the field for the first time a beagle pack, which 

 numbers twelve couples and hunts from Tilbury, near 

 Oxford. Eton College has had its beagles for years, 

 and it is to be hoped may continue to do so, in spite of 

 the absurd outcry raised recently by certain members 

 of the Humanitarian League. Clayesmore School, 

 Pangbourne, has also started a pack, which consists 

 of eleven and a half couples, and hunts the beautiful 

 Berkshire country in the neighbourhood of the Thames. 

 The Britannia Cadets have long possessed their pack 

 of beagles and shown very good sport in Devon, in the 

 Dartmouth district. Among soldiers, Aldershot 

 Camp produces a pack of sixteen-inch beagle-harriers, 

 which hunt the Aldershot district two days a week. 

 Colchester Garrison has its pack ; while, from New- 

 castle, yet another pack, the 5th and 68th R.D., has 

 for some years been hunted. 



I have sometimes heard it said that it is of little 

 use going out with a pack of beagles, because they 

 are too slow to get up to and run into their hares. 

 That is an absurd mis-statement, which a little 



