EARLY HUNTING EXPERIENCES. 13 



Hall and the pack at a gallop, but hounds, 

 having their heads up, passed over the line. 

 Mr Hall turned reproachfully to my father 

 when he found hounds were at fault, saying, 

 " If it had been any one but you, I should 

 have said it was a false holloa." To this the 

 reply came, " My dear Hall, if you will just 

 walk hounds down the hedge, you will give 

 them a chance of hitting off the line." This 

 advice Mr Hall acted on, and a brilliant run 

 of forty - five minutes, ending in a kill, was 

 the result. Mr Hall was up at the finish but 

 without his cap, and when Mr Newbolt arrived 

 on the scene he was wearing the missing cap 

 on the top of his own hat. 



In memory of this day's sport Mr Hall had 

 the fox's head set up in a glass case and sent 

 to my father, and it is still in my possession 

 in a perfect state of preservation. 



But while Mr Yeatman, Mr Hall, Mr Portman, 

 — the first Baron and first Viscount Portman, — 

 and later Mr Drax were hunting over parts of 

 Dorset and Somerset, the whole of the country of 

 Dorset was nominally under the mastership of Mr 

 T. J. Farquharson, whose hunt territory was no 

 less than fifty-four miles in length. Before, how- 

 ever, Mr Farquharson started his foxhounds in 

 1806 the country had been hunted early in the 

 eighteenth century. My friend Mr Charles Phelips 

 tells me that his great-grandfather, Mr Phelips of 

 Montacute, in Somerset, is said to have been the 



