INTRODUCTION ix 



was possible to breed and train a Foxhound that could find 

 his Fox at eleven o'clock and kill him before noon, instead 

 of an animal who had to be taken out in the middle of the 

 night all the winter through in order to give him the advantage 

 of finding his Fox asleep with supper undigested. We con- 

 stantly hear comparisons being made between the modern 

 and the ancient Foxhound, nearly always to the detriment 

 of the latter ; but in order to arrive at any real conclusion 

 we must be quite certain with what period of bygone days 

 comparison is invited. To say that Foxhounds in the reign 

 of George V are faster than they were in the reign of Queen 

 Anne would probably be correct ; but if we take the first 

 twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, he would indeed 

 be a bold man who could look on the elegant heads, beautiful 

 long necks and sloping shoulders portrayed in the picture 

 of Mr. Corbet and his Foxhounds, and assert that our Fox- 

 hounds are more speedy than these. Nor can we be asked 

 to believe that Mr. Assheton Smith or Mr. Osbaldiston dared 

 to face the elite of Leicestershire unless they had hounds 

 of superlative quality and sj>ced that could get out of the 

 way of those thoroughbred horses and riders so vividly depicted 

 in Nimrod's stirring chapter on Melton Mowbray. But speed 

 had already begun to be sought after by well-known Masters 

 of Hounds before the year 1800. The long reign of Mr. Hugo 

 Meynell over the Quorn country has set its indelible stamp 

 on the history of the chase. Only one degree less famous 

 is that of Mr. John SmitJi Barry over his native county of 

 Cheshire, where he inaugurated the sport of Foxhunting, 

 and handed his name down to posterity at large as the breeder 

 of Bluccap, the swiftest, if not the most celebrated Foxhound 

 of the eighteenth century. The match between these two 

 enthusiasts, which took place in 1762 on The Beacon Course 

 at Newmarket, when Mr. Barry's Bluecap and Wanton, 

 trained by the famous Will Crane on a diet of milk, oatmeal, 

 and boiled shecps'-trotters, accomplished four miles in less 

 than ten minutes, beating Mr. Meynell's hounds, who during 



