22 FIELD AND FERN. 



significance as Doncaster Moor or Ascot Heath to 

 an Englishman. The watch-towers yet stand on 

 the hill from which Sir John Maxwell of Pollok 

 used to watch the coursing, and enjoy the sport, all 

 the more if "half Glasgow" shared it. Once he 

 was ready mounted on Ambush, with his gamekeeper, 

 slipper, beaters, and his own stud of greyhounds be- 

 hind him to receive all comers at 12 ; and wherever 

 the fixture was to be, the hares had been carefully 

 netted out of the adjoining covers. Neil Cairnie 

 was there on his sheltie, enthusiastic about " Susan" f 

 James Crum on foot, with his constant friend " The 

 Dock," in chronic raptures about Charles James Fox ; 

 and so was the indefatigable quaker, who took charge 

 of the cards on prize days, and Avas sure to have them 

 headed, " He ivlio runs may readJ' Never was there 

 such patronage of coursing. But the old baronet is 

 dead and gone, and no greyhound now twists and 

 twines over those fine old pastures, except when Mr. 

 A. Graham and a few others wake the old echoes 

 with the So Ho ! and the Halloo ! Then there is 

 Ardrossan, with its nice ten to twenty acre en- 

 closures. Biggar has a great variety of ground, 

 much of it near Abington rough and chancy, and 

 some very good, generally sloping sheep pasture 

 deep in autumn, and with a Black Hill as great a 

 choke jade as the Newmarket rise from the dip in 

 the Two Thousand or the Beacon Hill at Ames- 

 bury. The old Biggar Club runs there no longer, but 

 was merged with the Caledonian Club into the 



