1 66 



.S TA G-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



out of scent on a good scenting day. He does not go 

 much faster at one time than another, but he goes no 

 slower, and he keeps going on. So do the hounds. Under 

 the fir-trees, and even among the birch and Spanish chest- 

 nut, there is no undergrowth to stop them. On a reaUy 

 good scenting day hounds can carry a head through a great 

 deal of the woodland, and there are none of the high 

 palisaded enclosures which the economics of forestrj^ have 

 recommended in the New Forest. The forest banks and 



The HiiiDEx Pbehistoric Euts 



grips mean nothing to the necks and shoulders and the dash 

 which their inheritance of the best blood in England gives 

 the Queen's Hounds, and outside on the open moorland, the 

 heather, except here and there in the deeper hollows, is not 

 high enough or strong enough to make hounds go appreci- 

 ably slower. It makes them string, and individual hounds 

 single themselves out. A rather long-backed hound named 

 Hotspur, which Harvey brought with him from the Isle of 

 "Wight- —a great favourite of mine — always led through the 



