INTRODUCTION ix 



hunting him to death, are very different operations ; and on this subject 

 I can state an incident to the point which I witnessed with Lord 

 Kintore's hounds in Scotland. We had run a fox about twenty minutes 

 into a small cover, whence we viewed him breaking away again. " Pray 

 help Joe to stop the hounds," said Lord Kintore to me, blowing his 

 horn at the time, " let him get well away and we shall have a run ! " He 

 did get well away, with the body of the pack on his line ; and the 

 result was a beautiful forty minutes, and his brush is now in my view. 

 I call this fox-hunting. 



Let me not be supposed to have the least intention of detracting 

 from the merits of Mv. Smith as a sportsman and a huntsman. The 

 man who can kill ninety foxes in as many days, and in what Mr. Warde 

 pronounced to l)e the worst scenting country he ever had to do with, 

 must be allowed to be both one and the other. He had his system, and 

 he found it answer ; my only object in alluding to it is the desire that 

 it may not become a precedent for those who come after him, and who 

 may in vain attempt or expect, by similar means, the like success. 



The Hambledon is certainly the best of all the Hampshire countries 

 for hounds, unless it be the New Forest, and I saw a splendid run over 

 it in Mr. Smith's time, of seventeen miles from point to point, without 

 entering one cover, and the first fourteen without a cast ; and in the 

 same season he had one of the most remarkable runs that the annals of 

 fox-hunting record, the description of it by Mr. Smith reminding one 

 of the fox-hunting of olden times. The fact was, his foxes in those 

 days took a lot of killing, and for this reason ; previously to his taking 

 the countiy, they had not been '' killed down," as we term it, and the 

 consequence was, a large portion of good old foxes able to stand before 

 hounds. ... I always admired Mr. Smith's conduct towards his field 

 — firm without being offensive. . . . 



I cannot dismiss my notice of Mr. Smith, as a master of hounds, 

 without offering a few remarks touching his book. I was disappointed 

 in finding it so short. The announcement of the Diary of a Huntsman, 

 — and of a huntsman of such long experience as Mr. Smith, — led me to 

 believe I should get at least twice the information from it than is 

 contained in the two hundred and twenty pages of large type and larger 

 margin. I looked for the experience of some particular days, in which 

 particular events had occurred, some particular diificulties been over- 

 come ; in fact, some new lights, and those by which masters and hunts- 

 men, as well as others, might more clearly see their way in the dark 

 and intricate path they take upon themselves to pursue in the difficult 

 science of hunting the fox. 



I think my friend — and in strict friendship I write this — is rather 

 hypothetical on the cunning and acquirements of foxes, the latter the 



