174 ON SCEXT. 



off; it was a large deep woodland where we found, 

 but the fox, which was no doubt a traveller, faced the 

 wind in a most determined manner, and we killed him, 

 after fifty-five minutes hard running, close to Broms- 

 grove Lickey. What impressed it more particularly 

 on my mind was, that we had to ride a distance of 

 twenty-five miles home afterwards. The general indi- 

 cations of a good scent are, — when the hounds smell 

 strong when they come out in a morning ; and when 

 they puke on their road to cover ; if the pavement 

 sweats or looks damp ; more frequently on the baro- 

 meter rising, than when it is the reverse ; when the 

 horses are faint on their road to the cover side ; in a 

 black frost the scent is frequently good, but in a white 

 one, when it is going off, there is seldom any ; frosty 

 mornings, with stormy weather after mid-day, are sel- 

 dom favourable to sport ; and if a large black cloud 

 comes suddenly over, the scent generally fails during 

 its influence. One poet tells us, that " a southerly 

 wind and a cloudy sky" are necessary for a good day's 

 sport ; while another describes one of the best days 

 ever seen in Leicestershire as taking place " with the 

 wind at north-east, forbidingly keen." Some persons 

 fancy that the wetter a country is, the better the scent 

 will be ; this is, to a certain extent erroneous, as 

 although moisture in some shape is conducive to it, so, 

 on the other hand, too much wet chills the soil, and 

 also the atmosphere, and destroys it. When I hunted 

 Holderness, which is allowed to be one of the deepest 

 and wettest countries in England, I observed that there 

 was always the best scent when the ground merely 

 showed the impression of the ball of the fox's foot ; 



