260 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



intuitive knowledge of a bog, and will never go near one. But 

 they have not sfufficdent paoe if hounds really run fasft, and 

 this sometimes happens on the mountains, for the turf is good 

 soenting ground, and foxes seem to prefer to run where they 

 are not impeded. They often lie in the heather patches, 

 but they seem to avoid this same heather when running 

 before hounds. As for the sheep, they are everywhere in the 

 mountain country, and great flocks of them will charge right 

 over the fox's line when hounds are running, stand for a 

 moment, and charge back again to the ground they came from. 

 Yet hounds will run on over the foiled ground, Jilmoat as if 

 no sheep had been there, and on a day of really good scent I 

 saw the pack go right through a flock of moving sheep without 

 faltering or decreaaing their paoe. The fact is that this particu- 

 lar pack of hounds are constantly among sheep. They are 

 exercised among them in the summer, and they can hardly go 

 hunting even on the lower ground of the Vale without meeting 

 them in every third or fourth field. " From what I can see of 

 the country," said the London chauffeur who presides over the 

 Broneirion cars, " the chief products of Wales are chapels, 

 public- houses, and sheep, ' ' and though ' ' you might not think 

 it there are actually more sheep than pubs." 



As for sport with Major Davies' hounds, I have seen some 

 excellent hunts in various parts of the country. The first 

 good run was in the Welshpool district, and hounds ran for 

 nearly three hours, covering a Tiuge extent of country 

 before their fox got to ground. In this hunt two 

 points of five miles apiece were made, and the country 

 was all ordinary agricultural land, with any number of 

 fences to be jumped. The next really good hunt I saw 

 lasted even longer, hounds being hard at it for four hours and 

 twenty minutes. Their fox was found close to kennels, 

 and hounds travelled along the base of a steep hill 

 for several miles, swung round and came back on a lower 

 parallel line. They then went down to the Severn Valley, 

 but after a time turned back to the hills and repeated their 

 earlier performance. And all this time they were travelling on 

 at a steady, holding pace, with hardly a check of any moment. 

 They had been running for three hours when they left the hills 

 for thtf last time, but the best part of the hunt waa to follow, 



