INTRODUCTORY 



have not survived. The claim to priority is still a 

 matter of difference of opinion, never likely to be 

 settled. It is claimed by some enthusiasts that the 

 Ormonde and King's County packs can be traced 

 to private establishments of foxhounds running in 

 the latter part of the seventeenth century, a claim 

 which may or may not be well founded. It seems 

 certain, however, that a Mr Lowther kept hounds 

 in Meath in 1740, and that a Mr Henry Wilson of 

 Ballgiblin was showing sport with the Duhallows 

 as early as 1745. Colonel Pigot of Glevoy was 

 another of the pioneers of the sport, who had a 

 pack of his own well back in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. The Kilkenny pack probably owes its origin 

 to Mr, afterwards Sir John, Power, who at first 

 lived on the patrimonial estate at Tullamaine 

 Castle, though the hounds were kennelled at 

 Kilfane, near Thomastown, or at Kilkenny. In the 

 last quarter of the eighteenth century the pack 

 was bought en bloc from a Yorkshire gentleman 

 named Wharton, so was probably of pure Enghsh 

 blood. It was recruited later with drafts from 

 Colonel Thornton's hounds, which included the 

 celebrated Modish, a descendant of whose. Har- 

 binger, is regarded as the founder of the existing 

 Kilkenny pack. Other packs which date from the 

 eighteenth century, and doubtless owe their origin 

 to similar private effort, are the Limerick, the 

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