214 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



I was obliged to stop. A glance at the map will show that 

 an extraordinary amount of ground was covered in this hunt, 

 and a very long point made to the turn near Easton. Many 

 other good hunts I saw with this pack, but at times the sport 

 was quite spoilt by the mange epidemic which was then raging 

 in Herts and Essex, and which caused such mortality among 

 the foxes that sound, travelling members of the tribe were 

 not easily found. Fields with the Puckeridge were large 

 in those days, especially in the Bishop's Stortford district, 

 where there is more population than in other parts of the 

 hunt. The Saturday country in the extreme north-west is 

 very thinly populated, and somewhat remote from any centre 

 of population. Still, even there there used to be a fair 

 muster, for Saturday is a popular hunting day with business 

 men, and many used to travel long distances when hounds met 

 at such places as Barkway or Reed. And in this neighbour- 

 hood hounds were apt to run into the Cambridgeshire country ; 

 and I well remember one December evening when they 

 finished about four miles north of Royston, and I had to 

 ride home a distance of twenty-two miles in extraordinary 

 darkness. I got some gruel for my horse at Royston, but 

 there was no one of the few who had stayed to the end 

 going my way, and as it was too dark to attempt any short 

 cuts by the fields I had to stick to the lanes, and my tired 

 horse kept blundering against the hedges. Near the south- 

 east of the Puckeridge Hunt lies Takeley Forest, a huge wood- 

 land, which is neutral to the Puckeridge and Essex. But 

 this particular forest is in many places very open, with 

 " squares " of railed-off covert and open grass between. Both 

 packs are often there, and a finer cubhunting ground could 

 hardly be found, for cubs dodge across from one square to 

 the next repeatedly, and are much more frequently seen by 

 the field than in a dense woodland where the rides are still 

 thick with summer growth. In Takeley Forest I have seen 

 Baily, the late Essex huntsman, to great advantage on a hot 

 morning, and watched him hunt cub after cub in scieaitifio and 

 satisfactory fashion. I have also seen the Puckeridge, later 

 in the season, hunt foxes which would not leave the forest, 

 and for woodland hunting alone, I think, Takeley Forest is 

 the best hunting ground I ever knew. There is another very 



