:' THE TYNEDALE COUNTRY. 161 



a comic scene, but it only lasted for a few minutes, and mean- 

 time hounds were going on alongside the brook, and the 

 leaders of the field had no idea what was occurring behind. 

 North of Milbourne is the Belsay district, but the two places 

 are separated by a wildish tract of grazing land, in which is 

 located Bitchfield Whin, the starting point of the hunt to 

 Lee Hall described above. This is a fine covert., and I have 

 never seen it drawn blank, but I do not think I have been 

 there more than seven or eight times when hounds have drawn 

 it. Milbourne, East Dissington, Bitchfield, and some of the 

 other Belsay coverts are right on the Morpeth border, and foxes 

 fonnd therein are just as likely to go into the Kirkley district 

 of the Morpeth hunt as to remain in Tynedale country. 

 Indeed, I have seen the pack cross and recross the high road 

 which forms the boundary half a. dozen times in the day. 

 Round Belsay Hall there are the Lake Coverts, the Bantam, 

 and a plantation ronnd the village, which, if I reoolleot 

 rightly, is called the School Plantation. The Lake Covert 

 is probably the best of these, but the covert of the Belsay 

 Estate is Bygate, which is described as " an open coveirt " 

 in the account of the Lee Hall Hunt in Major Bell's master- 

 ship. Judging from the size of the trees, Bygate was prob- 

 ably very recently planted at. the time referred to, but of 

 late years it has been a wonderful covert, there being any 

 amount of lying, with heather, gorse, and bracken still grow- 

 ing among the trees. The covert is long and narrow at the 

 Belsay end, but wider at the western end, and it isi on a 

 sloping hill, and according to my experience, remarkably dry. 

 Just north of it is a narrow plantation. — at right angles to. the 

 westiem end of Bygate — but this I always look upon almost as 

 parti of Bygate, and, anyhow, if the lasti named is drawn, it 

 is good odds that the other place — called, I think, the Brick 

 Kilns — ^is disturbed. What I like best about Bygate is that 

 it affords constant proof of thei fact thati foxes and pheasants 

 can dwell in amity, for I have never been at Bygat© and found 

 it untenanted by very considerable numbers of either. I r«i- 

 member once being on a ride in the middle of the covert, when 

 four or five foxes crossed within a. few minutes, and at the 

 same time pheasants were rising in great numbers, and going 

 either to the Brick Kilns or the Lake Wood. Fine, high- 



