ii6 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



tense of the old Devon and Somerset staghounds in his in- 

 teresting book on tlie chase of the wild red deer. ' A nobler 

 pack of hounds no man ever saw. They had been in the 

 county for years, and had been bred with the utmost care for 

 the express purpose of stag-hunting. What the exact origin 

 of this breed was I am unable to state with accuracy. The 

 bloodhound and old southern hound, however, were beyond 

 doubt amongst the ancestors of the pack, which when sold 

 consisted of about thirty couples. In height, the hounds were 

 about twenty-six to twenty-eight inches ; colour generally 

 hare pyed, yellow, yellow and white, or badger pyed, with 

 long ears, deep muzzles, large throats and deep chests. In 

 tongue they were perfect, and when hunting in water, or on 

 half-scent, or baying a deer, they might be heard at an 

 immense distance. Even when running at speed they gave 

 plenty of tongue, and their great size enabled them to cross 

 the long heather and rough sedgy pasturage of the forest 

 without effort or difficulty. The hills and woods of Devon 

 and Somerset will never again ring to the melody of such 

 a pack.' 



Mr. Fitt, in his capital ' Covert-side Sketches,' accepts a 

 comparatively modern hound called AVindsor, described in 

 the ' Sporting Magazine ' for April, 1840, as the true stag- 

 hound. He even goes further, and accepts him as the type of 

 the staghound of George III.'s pack in its best days. This 

 Windsor was a distinguished member of the Massy Buck- 

 hounds, a crack Tipperary pack of that day, and was pre- 

 sumably entered somewhere about 1820. This is what his 

 biographer has to say about him : ' Windsor, who deserves the 

 name of ' Ultimus Romanorum,' was the noblest buckhound 

 I ever saw, although I have been in their celebrated company 

 almost from my infancy. His colour was white with a small 

 spot of yellow upon each ear, heavy dew-lap, immense fore- 

 part and somewhat cat-ham, which belonged to their pristine 



