LONG POINTS AND THE HEYTHROP. 223 



spent in the Forest (Delamere Forest), I need hardly say 

 that T did not see the best of the country. On one occasion 

 horinds were in the open to begin with, quite in the corner 

 of the coTintry which lies nearest to the Dee estuary, and they 

 had a pretty hunt of half an hour, to ground in some rocks 

 near the Frodsham Golf Links. Afterwards they went to 

 the forest, but it was a day of good scent, and foxes 

 •came away into the open, and almost invariably went back 

 to the forest after ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. On 

 another occasion I was with hounds in the forest all day long 

 when scent was bad, the ground being very dry. It was at 

 the end of the season, and I never saw so many foxes close 

 together at that particular time of year, but hounds were 

 terribly handicapped, and kept changing from one to another. 

 I think on one or two of these days the proportion of women 

 to men was the largest I ever saw in any hunt, and I was 

 much struck with the fine quality of some of the horses. It 

 was no easy matter to see what hounds were doing at times, 

 but I saw twoi huntsmen at work — on different days — Short, 

 and Walter Wilson, which latter was first, whipper-in, but car- 

 ried the horn on one of the days. Short I had seen before in 

 Essex, and found he was as capable a huntsman as he had 

 been whipper-in fifteen years before. Wilson had, I thought, 

 a wonderful voice in covert. My visits to the Wirral Har- 

 riers were during the Mastership of Capt. Ker, between 1895 

 and 1890, but I cannot fix the date. What I do remember 

 is that one of them was, frc'm a riding and not from a hunt- 

 ing point of view, one of the most extraordinary days I ever 

 had with hounds, and that I saw some of the greatest thrust- 

 ing it has ever been my lot to witness. As a matter of course, 

 hares jerked about, and there was never any point, but we 

 were in a grass country of small enclosures and very strongly 

 fenced , with always one, sometimes two, ditches to each fence. 

 There did not appear to be any particular reason why a 

 number of these big fences should be jumped. Often there 

 was no hurry, and a gate was handy, but there was a strong 

 riding contingent of eight or ten, including one or two ladies, 

 among the large field, and whenever the big fences appeared 

 they went straight at them, and either got over or through, 

 or came to grief. The Master, a very big man, and his very 



