286 THE QUORN HUNT 



as usual. Atmospheric conditions were adverse, and 

 rather poor sport was experienced, but the Leicestershire 

 ranks were at this time recruited by Mr. Bromley Daven- 

 port, whose essays on sport, and hunting poems, have been 

 so much appreciated. He took the house of the welter- 

 weight Colonel Wyndham, put it into repair, and hunted 

 for a season or two more with the Quorn, with which 

 pack he had always appeared in the first flight. Early 

 in the season the Quorn had a very fair run from 

 Wartnaby Stone-pits. 



They found a fox at Welby Fishponds, hounds running at a 

 great rate towards Ashfordby, most of the field being left behind. 

 The fox ran up wind, crossed the river Wreake, but luckily within 

 convenient distance of a bridge, over which the few men who 

 secured a good start passed, and managed to keep somewhere near 

 hounds. Then the fox went over the railway, turned to the left, 

 and eventually made his way into Melton parish, and from there 

 went tolerably straight for Mr. Burbage's new covert, hounds 

 running fast all the time, and when they reached the last-men- 

 tioned covert fifty minutes had elapsed from the start. The good 

 sportsman who owned the place was first up, with Lord Wilton 

 not very far behind him, and then either the run fox or a substi- 

 tute went across the river to Stapleford, and getting into the park 

 among the deer hounds had to give up, after a capital run of 

 something over an hour. 



We next come to rather a curious complaint as to Mr. Clowes's 

 hounds. It was said that instead of working slowly and following 

 the scent quietly, as they used to do, hounds ran very much faster, 

 and nine-tenths of the runs resolved themselves into a race, con- 

 sequently the bulk of the field saw little or nothing of what took 

 place, unless by short cuts or dodging they happened to drop in 

 when the hounds took a turn. 



This, it must be remembered, was not in the olden 

 days of hunting — though even then, at any rate in the 

 time of Mr. Warde and Mr. Meynell, hounds were not 

 slow — but no longer ago than 1863, so one can hardly 

 understand the meaning of the criticism. The letter, 



