MOTHER HUNT 123 



Here follow " Mother " Hunt's personal reminiscences, which 

 would have an interest of their own however much the matter over- 

 lapped that of the Burges Narratives. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF TRINITY FOOT 

 BEAGLES 



By Rowland Hunt 



I took over the Trinity Foot Beagles from Mr. Cecil Tennant. 

 The books in which the accounts of runs were kept had unfortunately 

 been lost and no accounts of runs were kept. I think that I began 

 to hunt the Beagles towards the end of the autumn term of the year 

 1880, and hunted them during 1881 and 1882. When I first took 

 them they were kept at a public-house by a publican and were not 

 well fed and looked after. It was very unsatisfactory, and we got up 

 a subscription and built Kennels on the outskirts of Cambridge, and 

 had our own man to look after them. I had some trouble with the 

 neighbours from the noise hounds made. I bought some very good 

 hounds from a Mr. Jackson, somewhere in the south of England, and 

 also bred some. Harkaway and Vestal were two of the very best 

 hounds. In my time the hounds were drafted and bred entirely for 

 nose, tongue, drive, and perseverance, and we also tried to keep them 

 between 14 and 16 inches inclusive. They were a very good ^mck of 

 beagles when I left Cambridge, and the last season at Cambridge 

 killed eighty-eight hares and a fox, but this included a certain 

 amount of days during early autumn and the Christmas vacation, 

 when I hunted them at home in Shropshire. The fox was killed 

 accidentally as they changed from a hare, and though there were 

 some farmers out riding they were not stopped. This was in the 

 Wheatland country in Shropshire about Christmas time. About 

 fifty minutes very fast. 



Mr. Fellowes of Shotesham let us have a few couples of hounds 

 which were too small for him. They were, I believe, pure harriers, 

 but very good in their work. The farmers were extremely good to 

 us and we had very little troiible, and a blank day was almost, if not 

 quite, unknown. The hounds were taken long distances in a van as 



