v224 FIELD AND FERN. 



The hounds do not go higher now than Bowhill, 

 where the Duke lives during the hunting season. 

 His Grace's ardour for the sport speaks best through 

 the fact that on the last day of the 1863-64^ season 

 he rode forty miles to cover, and as many back after 

 hunting. Twelve miles is the average distance of the 

 meets from the kennel, but at times they go more 

 than twenty, and nearly up to Coldstream. The 

 Kelso country is the biggest, with the hedges, banks, 

 rails and doubles below, and stone walls higher 

 up : wire fences have increased and multiplied on the 

 hills; but there are plenty of hunting gates, with 

 posts eight or ten feet high as beacons, at the Hunt's 

 expense, so that the " iron age" here is no symptom 

 of foxhunting decay. " Faldonside — one of the 

 flyers of our hunt — you may put that down Mr. 

 Druid" — twice over made himself independent 

 of them, by hanging his coat over the wires, and 

 then jumping them — "a fact for Scottish his- 

 tory," as Williamson observed when he heard 

 of it. The Hawick, Chapel Hill, and Drink stone 

 -side, and from Wolf Lee to Yetholm, are quite the 

 " Turkey carpet country," " all grass and no fear of 

 bogging." Most of the foxes lie in the heather at 

 the bottom of young plantations, and the earth- 

 stopping account is a pretty heavy one. There are 

 some good ones at Mellerstain and Bow Hill, and 

 EUer Bank Wood, and many others along the Tweed. 

 Gala LaAV is a great gorse, and Chapel Hill, Wilton 

 Bourne, and Grundiston, all made covers, with a belt 



