336 Silk and Scarlet, 



season, comprising a period of nine months and 

 twenty-three days, or 299 days." The Journal seems 

 to record every emotion he felt ; occasionally it ob- 

 serves — " Here was a most cheering cry ;" and adds, 

 after an unsuccessful lift, " the intelligence was of the 

 falsest kind." On one occasion he seems to have been 

 quite out in his calculations, and he thus took care to 

 acquaint posterity. " And the fox was viewed by 

 Mr. Lee ; and the hounds were carried to the spot 

 two minutes after the fox was viewed ; and the scent 

 was so very bad, that by tucking the hounds' heads 

 up, they would never once hit off the scent again ; 

 nor could one own the scent ; not one hound. So we 

 lost our fox by tucking the hounds' heads up to get 

 them near to their fox, after hunting him very pretty 

 for two hours over a pretty country." Still, pretty as 

 this country might have been in his eyes, seeing that 

 he hunted it for four-and-twenty years, the Woore 

 country suited him equally well ; and it was there 

 that "the varmint old fellow" was seen in his glory in 

 later years — " Though with scarce a whole bone in his 

 skin ;" and ready to break his ribs for the third, and 

 his collar-bone for the eighth time, if he could only 

 get the chance. 



Modem Oakley Tho bcst blood in the Oakley kennel 

 Hounds. between 1835-46 was from Jasper, an 

 active light-coloured hound of twenty-three inches, 

 while Cottesmore Grecian, from whom he was one or 

 two degrees removed, was said to measure twenty- 

 seven. They sent out a litter of twelve by him in one 

 year, and got them all through the distemper; and 

 when they had drafted the biggest and the smallest, 

 the rest made a very level lot. Jasper came with 

 Phoenix, (a perfect terror to a fox), and Tuneful, in a 

 lot, as a present from the Earl of Lonsdale to the 

 Marquis of Tavistock; and George Beers was especially 

 fond of crossing the Jasper bitches with the Fitzwilliam 

 Monarch and Fatal blood. Prizer, an old-fashioned 



