HARE-HUNTING 



were used for fox-hunting and, as the old slow system of hare- 

 hunting lost vogue, for that sport also. 



Such discipline as Budgell admired can be matched among 

 foxhounds. It is recorded of Mr. Meynell that one day, in the 

 INIarket Harborough country, he was drawing a thin gorse 

 covert, and the fox was in danger of being chopped. He called 

 to Jack Raven to take the hounds away, and at one of his usual 

 rates every hound stopped and was taken to the hedge side. 

 Meynell then called three steady hounds by name and threw 

 them into the covert. The fox was so loth to break that the 

 three hunted him for about ten minutes in the hearing of the 

 whole pack ; but so perfect was the discipline, they lay quietly 

 about Raven's horse until the fox went away. Then the 

 Master gave ' his most energetic, thrilling halloo,' and every 

 hound flew to him. An instance of discipline equally striking 

 is cited on the authority of Sir Arthur Halkett in Lord Ribbles- 

 dale's book, The Queen's Hounds. And let us not forget the 

 vast difference of temperament between Sir Roger de Coverley's 

 ' Stop hounds ' and the foxhound. 



It has been remarked by a modern writer that if Sir Roger's 

 rescue of the hare exempUfied the usual practice, those Southern 

 hounds must have been above such material considerations 

 as blood. There is much reason to think that the chase was 

 far more than the quarry to the Southern hound : which 

 suggests the reflection that fox-flesh is an acquired taste, and 

 one that all hounds have not yet acquired. Welsh hounds do 

 not always break up their fox, unless urged on to do it or en- 

 couraged by English companions : the late Sir Richard Green 

 Price told me he had ' often known them leave their dead fox 

 if they kill him by themselves.' The foxhoimds of the fells also 

 do not break up their quarry. Hounds would not eat fox-flesh 

 in Turbervile's day (1575) ; but when Nicholas Cox wrote in 

 1685 he said, ' Many hounds will eat the fox with eagerness.' 

 Evidently they had learned to do it during the hundred years 

 preceding. 



It is permissible to suspect the unqualified charity of the 



47 



