90 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



the bag I did. To show what presei-vation will do, and the 

 breeding up partiidges by hand, I do not think that on the 

 fai-ms round the great woods at Hari'old, when I first came, I 

 could have killed two brace of birds. Having bred by hand 

 there, at a tent which I pitched for an under-keeper, where I 

 had previously found no partridges, during the few last years 

 of my stay I could always, in the earlier part of September, 

 average twenty brace. 



When the harvest was gathered, and riot come home to the 

 covers, the nutting season, and the shooting seapon, and the fall 

 of the leaf conjoined, these united difficulties in so wide an 

 extent of woodland entailed at times a lengthened draw before 

 I could find a fox, and occasioned me much trouble. The 

 immense body or over-cry of yoimg hounds in high condition, 

 and, as the saying is, " full of devil," as young hounds should 

 be, who had been taught what hunting was, and who were im- 

 patient for a scent, no matter what it was — most of them those 

 from Berkeley Castle, reared on farms full of hares, where they 

 commenced hunting as soon as they could run, — I say this over- 

 cry of puppies, in a long draw for a fox, or in a bad scent 

 among hares, was a very difficult thing to manage, and reijuired 

 the utmost patience and perseverance, and a quick whipper-in, 

 — and that I had in Tom Skinner, \\1ien things went wild, it 

 was difficult under these cii'cumstances to show sport; but 

 every now and then, with a quick find and a holding scent, 

 the cry would bring down the very leaves, and make the bushes 

 crack again, as the eager devilry rushed through the woods. 



The first regular season conunenced ; I advertised the four days 

 a week, and was soon given to see that the chief and most disagree- 

 able difficulty I had to contend with was a certain malevolence 

 within, what was called, the Oakley Club ; the secretary of which 

 did not hunt, and therefore could not have been personally in- 

 terested, or much of a judge in the spoi-t and method of the 

 master of hounds. Towards the close of the first season, the 

 Oakley Club, continuing in the same course which they had latterly 

 observed towards the former master of hounds. Lord Tavistock, 



