450 HUNTING. 



latter ; and the strongest woodlands do not require 

 more than from twenty-two to twenty-five couples. 



The average speed of fox-hounds is estimated at 

 ten miles, point hlank^ over a country, with a good 

 scent, in one hour ; that is to say, making allow- 

 ance for deviations from the straisjht line, hounds 

 seldom go more than ten miles, from point to point, 

 in that space of time. Mr. Beckford has a very 

 judicious remark on this part of his subject. " That 

 pack," he writes, " may be said to go the fastest 

 that can run ten miles the soonest, notwithstand- 

 ing the hounds separately may not run so fast 

 as many others. A pack of hounds, considered in 

 a collective body, go fast in proportion to the ex- 

 cellence of their noses and the head they carry ; as 

 that traveller gets soonest to his journey'*s end who 

 stops least upon the road. Some hounds that I 

 have hunted with would creep all through the same 

 hole, though they might have leaped the hedge ; 

 and would follow one another in a string, as true 

 as a team of cart-horses. I had rather see them, 

 like the horses of the sun, all abreast!''' 



There is nothing in the history of our domestic 

 sports and pastimes to inform us correctly as to 

 the date of the first regularly-established pack of 

 fox-hounds kept in England. Neither the holy 

 prioress of St. Alban's, Dame Juliana Bannes, 

 Markham, nor any of the very old writers on such 

 subjects, are able to satisfy us on this point ; but, 

 on the authority of the Rev. William Ohafin, in 

 his Anecdotes respecting Cranhourn Ckase^ the first 

 real steady pack of fox-hounds established in the 



