2 EARLIEST REMINISCENCES 



had kept his racers (by which, under his own jockey- 

 ship, he had won over twenty cups and pieces of plate, 

 besides stakes), his hunters, and pack of hounds ; it is 

 no wonder therefore, that being thus bred, I should have 

 manifested such an early predilection for horses and 

 hounds. 



My father's original pack was composed chiefly of the 

 late Lord Egremont's blood ; their height averaging 

 twenty-three inches (the standard of the Belvoir fox- 

 hounds), and from their performances they were equal 

 in speed and quickness to any of the present day. As an 

 instance, I may notice their extraordinary rapidity in 

 drawing large thick coverts, through which they dashed as 

 fast as the whipper-in could trot by their side ; and when 

 their fox was found, they were at him like lightning, until 

 he was forced to fly or die. But foxes in those times were 

 of a different sort to what they are now, since crossed with 

 the French ; and as they generally kennelled in large 

 woodlands, they had an advantage over hounds, by being 

 up and away, with a good start. Moreover, it was not 

 the fashion then to clap hounds on to the back of a fox 

 the moment he broke covert. 



I may here mention, to show the stoutness of foxes at 

 that period, two or three runs with my father's old pack ; 

 one from Northwood, near North Wraxall, in Wiltshire, 

 where they found their fox, and killed him in a chalk pit, 

 close to the town of Warminster, more than twenty miles 

 in a straight line from where he was found ; having passed 

 through twelve or thirteen parishes. The coverts they 

 traversed in this run were Coleme Park, Box Bottoms, 

 Cottles Wood, Bradford Wood, and the Rood Ashton 

 woodlands, and the pace at which they went away with 

 their fox so great, that my father, although mounted on a 



