THE FOX-HOUND. 67 



it would have sent a Melton field home in no time; so that if a 

 terrier did not get up^ he would not be worth his keep. 



Then they have a burst in view to the covert, where he would 

 be tailed off for a time ; but there is plenty of work ere he is 

 killed for the little one to regain his place, as the author says, 

 "He is now in the very strongest part of the cover. What a 

 crash ! every hound is in, and every hound is running him. 

 That was a quick turn ! Again another : he's put to his shifts. 

 !N"ow Mischief is at his heels, a«id death is not far off. Ha ! 

 they all stop at once; all silent, and yet no earth is open. 

 Listen ! Now they are at him again ! Did you hear that 

 hound catch view ? They had over-run the scent, and the fox 

 had lain down behind them." But I need not quote further, as 

 it is plain there was plenty of time for the terriers to get up and 

 have a turn at him at last, let the pace have been fast as it may 

 in the burst; so this proves nothing as to the hounds being slow. 

 But I have more than negative evidence to support my view of 

 the case, for Daniels, who published his **Eural Sports" in 1801, 

 and consequenty about twenty years after Beckford, whose first 

 letter is dated 1779, says, "After a very severe burst of up- 

 wards of an hour, a fox was, by my own hounds, run to earth at 

 Heney Dovehouse, near Sudbury, in Suffolk ; the terriers were 

 lost, but, as the fox went to ground in view of the headmost 

 hounds, and it was the concluding day of the season, it was 

 resolved to dig him." However, as Daniels, in narrating the in- 

 cident, says "some years since," we may fairly suppose that 

 from ten to fifteen years elapsed between the time Beckford 

 wrote and this incident — a period in which very little appreciable 

 difference in the speed of hounds could have taken place. 



I now come to a still stronger argument, that the fox-hound 

 had at this period arrived at perfection, viz., the public and 

 private trials run over Newmarket Heath on trail-scents. I will 

 not inflict the thrice-told tale of these contests on my readers, 

 but simply state that Mr. Barry's Bluecap and Wanton, a four 

 and three year old, ran, on the 30th of September, from the 



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