BECKFORD ON HARRIERS. 443 



your hunting ;'' but it must here be remarked, that 

 in the preceding sentence, this eminent sportsman 

 speaks of the difficulty of getting a strong pack of 

 harriers to run well together ; a difficulty which 

 no doubt existed in his day, but is totally over- 

 come in the best hare-hunting establishments of 

 ours. Indeed, we once heard a sportsman declare, 

 and he was a sportsman who had hunted in all the 

 best countries in England, that he had never seen 

 a chase quite complete from end to end, not a 

 single hound being out of place, until he saw it 

 with a pack of harriers — those already alluded to, 

 as belonging to Sir John Dashwood King — over 

 the Cotswold Hills. 



The following passage from Beckford is worthy 

 of his pen, and should be strictly observed by all 

 masters of harriers : — " Harriers, to be good, must 

 be kept to their own game. If you run fox with 

 them, you spoil them. Hounds cannot be perfect 

 unless used to one scent and to one style of hunt- 

 ing. Harriers run fox in so different a style from 

 hare, that it is of great disservice to them when 

 they return to hare again. It makes them wild, 

 and teaches them to skirt. The high scent which 

 a fox leaves, the straightness of his running, the 

 eagerness of the pursuit, and the noise that gene- 

 rally accompanies it, all contribute to spoil a har- 

 rier."" We conclude that the writer here alludes 

 to hunting wild foxes, which is now very rarely 

 done with a pack of harriers, at least in countries 

 near to which fox-hounds are kept. No master of 

 harriers would do it, who wishes his pack to be per- 



