LORD NAAS, 1857-1862 



his invaluable recollections. *' When your father 

 took the hounds," he writes to me, " the country 

 was an absolute wreck. That spring, jogging home 

 from hunting, Stephen Goodall remarked to me 

 that there would hardly be a covert standing, and 

 there were already not more than half a dozen." 



I have set out on a former page how under the 

 fostering care of Sir John Kennedy the hunting 

 country of the Kildare hounds had been developed 

 from the very modest beginnings of the first fifteen 

 years of the century until in 1841 he left it with 

 forty-nine well-cared-for fox coverts. I gather from 

 slight pieces of evidence which appear at intervals 

 during the following ten years that his wise and 

 beneficent policy was continued by succeeding 

 Masters, with the result that by the middle years 

 of the century the Kildare country was eminently 

 well provided in that all-important matter of fox 

 coverts. The country had probably reached its 

 best during the Mastership of Mr W. Kennedy, 

 by which time the Hunt was enjoying the cumula- 

 tive effect of half a century of careful planting, 

 zealous overlooking and thorough preservation of 

 foxes. But after that disastrous winter of the Cri- 

 mean year the country was left practically naked, 

 and a report of a committee appointed to make a 

 thorough examination of the coverts, dated in the 

 summer of 1857, amply confirms Mr Kennedy's 

 R 241 



