GOOD SPORT FOR A DAY. 211 



in his day's work. The fashionable hour of meet- 

 ing now-a-days is about eleven o'clock. Say a fox 

 is unkennelled in half an hour, and you have 

 twenty or thirty minutes' burst, best pace, with a 

 good finish — short, sharp, and decisive. A fox- 

 hound in good wind and condition is little the 

 worse for such a spurt as this. Allow, then, an 

 hour for cofiee-housing, and finding another fox ; 

 this brings you to past one o'clock. Say another 

 hunting run of an hour and forty minutes, and you 

 have had sport sufiicient to satisfy any reasonable 

 man for one day. The fox-hound has been going 

 partly at full, and partly at half speed, with an 

 hour's interruption, for about two hours and a half, 

 and then returns home ; and this is a day's sport 

 far above the average, taking the season through- 

 out, with any pack of fox-hounds, and taking into 

 account blank and bad scenting days. But 

 whether the scent be good or bad, game scarce or 

 plentiful, the setter is continually on the gallop for 

 four hours, at the lowest computation, and being 

 employed to beat covert also, has no exemption 

 from briers or black -thorn. 



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