HUNTS AND THEIR HISTORY 139 



by a timely note. But in this small square covert 

 of thorns the fox, being young and inexperienced, 

 has waited, and that pause has sealed his fate, for 

 this time hounds and fox come out almost together, 

 and it is a race for life for the fox and a steeplechase 

 for the followers for the next two miles till the hounds 

 fairly run into him in the open. A Bel voir burst 

 of twenty minutes of the best ! So the day, with 

 perhaps another burst, or it may be a long steady 

 hunt, goes on. If you stay to the end, when the 

 hounds turn away for the kennels at the end of the 

 day, you will see that they will trot off as gaily as 

 they started in the morning. The Master, the ser- 

 vants, and the much diminished field will have tired 

 out two horses apiece, but courage and condition 

 will apparently leave the hounds as willing and able 

 to hunt when the shadows of the short November 

 twilight put a stop to the sport as when they left 

 their kennels in the morning. 



Now, this pack that you have watched and followed 

 with so much interest and pleasure, is the result of 

 at least a hundred years of selection, judgment and 

 thought. There are fifty or sixty couples in kennels 

 and as many puppies are sent out to walk, of whom 

 not a third will be found worthy of a trial in the 

 pack and fewer still of a permanent place on the 

 hound list. The first definite knowledge we have 

 of the Belvoir hounds is in 1727, in the days of the 

 third Duke of Rutland. His son, the famous Marquis 

 of Granby, spent some of the time he could spare 

 from " the wars " in hunting, and we know that he 

 improved the pack. The fourth Duke married a 

 Somerset, the beautiful Lady Mary Isabella, whose 

 portrait by Sir Joshua hangs on the walls at Bad- 

 minton, and from Badminton came two hounds. 



