THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 73 



at Riding Mill a week later was the outcome of my injudicious 

 behaviour, and Colonel Cowen made a facetious speech, in 

 which he implied that jumping fences was more in my line 

 than really hunting foxes. This, by the way, was far from 

 the truth, for I always considered the hound work of much 

 more importance than anything else in hunting, only the 

 Colonel, with whose hounds I was an occasional visitor, did 

 not at that time know it. But I remember at the Newcastle 

 races of the following summer having a long talk with the 

 Master, who was somewhat surprised to find that I knew all 

 the hounds in the North Durham pack, and was a fairly 

 frequent visitor to the kennels. " My experience is," he said, 

 " that all the young men who hunt only want to gallop and 

 jump, and care nothing for hound work," and doubtless this 

 is true of many men in many countries. 



I am nevertheless inclined to think that in the smaller 

 countries, where people hunt throughout the season in the 

 same company and with the same hounds, a fair number of 

 regular followers not only appreciate hound work, but 

 know by sight and name all, or nearly all, the best 

 hounds in the pack. And in the North Durham country five 

 and thirty years ago I know this was the case even with the 

 younger men. Captain Apperley, John Greenwell, and his 

 cousin, Alan Greenwell (for many years' secretary of the 

 hunt), Hutton Maynard (the Master's eldest son), and pos- 

 sibly one or two others, knew the hounds as well as the hunts- 

 man did, while at the present day Miss Rogerson 

 not only knows every hound and its peculiarities, but 

 in four cases out of five also knows the note of any 

 single hound which speaks, provided, of course, that 

 the chorus is not great enough to drown the individual note. 

 Where fields are always large the hound lover must find it 

 difiicult to become really acquainted with the pack he follows, 

 but even then it can be done by degrees, if only the enthusiast 

 has a quick eye and a good memory. " I know a lot of these 

 hounds, and I know a lot of their names, but I never can 

 remember which name belongs to any particular hound," 

 I once heard a young man say, and a year or two later, when 

 he had become a Master and I visited his kennels, I reminded 

 him of it, and he confessed that he still found the same diffi- 



