164 FIELD AND FERN. 



and so on to Alnwick, it may be said to be '' all 

 under ground." There are also some very craggy 

 streams, and many a gallant couple have died at the 

 Blue Braes on the banks of the White Adder. Arti- 

 ficial manures and sheep smears, whose patentee, 

 Avhoever he is, may take notice that they can be 

 " smelt a mile off," are answerable for many a check. 



The stud is very grand, and owes much to Sun- 

 beam and Turnus, the former of which was only just 

 dead. Bob Carlyle, his lordship^s head groom, and 

 one of the best known men among horses in Scot- 

 land, bought him, in one of his voyages of discovery, 

 at the Lucan steeple-chases, and his lordship rode 

 him for eight or nine seasons, and never knew him 

 tire. He was a dark chesnut of fifteen-two, and got all 

 his stock great natural jumpers, bigger than himself, 

 and generally chesnuts. Bob liked the sort so much 

 that he picked up his own brother another year, but 

 he died early. The Turnus blood is very strongly 

 represented, thanks to Bob^s constant pilgrimages to 

 Knockhill ; and the premier, a six-year-old chesnut 

 of immense substance, very fast and great at his 

 fences, bears that name. There, too, are his bay 

 brother, and Hoddom, a very sweet one, Tom of 

 Linne (half-brother to Lord of Linne), and The 

 Eriar, quite " the boy for the hills." 



Old Dumfries, on which his lordship is painted, 

 bears in his drooping back the mark of nine sea- 

 sons ; Wellesbrookis a long and smart brown Irish- 

 man of about half as many ; and the Glasgow horse 



