The Leighton Hall Herd. 43 1 



Shavington Park to Peel's Gorse, and vice versa, is 

 a very favourite fast thing, with a rare scent over grass. 



The cub-hunting is confined to the Wynnstay 

 Woods for a week or ten days, beginning with the last 

 week in August, until the corn is cut. Then they 

 adjourn to the Duke's Woods (so called after the late 

 Duke of Bridgewater), which have rare lying, and are 

 full of foxes. Chirk Woods furnish an off-morning 

 from Wynnstay, but when they draw Llangedwin 

 Woods, they shift to kennels on the spot, and stay 

 out a week. Sometimes they go there at the end of 

 the season to make a finish. Oswestry racecourse 

 for Llandforda is the last day of the regular season, 

 and the Welshmen come out to see the sport on their 

 ponies. The general average of " noses" is fifty brace, 

 of which twenty are killed in cub-hunting. 



A forty minutes' ride down the Vale of Welshpool 

 was a grand relief after Oswestry — that dullest of 

 towns — when Sir Watkin does not meet at the race- 

 course. The Severn, which has lent its name to one 

 of the noblest bulls that ever grazed in its pastures, 

 wound humbly along amid its sedge and willows, 

 crossed here and there by a rustic hand-bridge. 

 About 200 acres of clay and loam interchanging along 

 its banks, furnish Mr. Naylor with good grazing 

 ground for his Herefords ; but the majority of 1500, 

 which form the Leighton Hall Farm, consists of Long 

 Mountain and High Sheep land, all of which has 

 been gradually enclosed. Not many years since it 

 was clothed with heath and furze, and wiry tufted 

 grass, among which Welsh sheep and ponies worked 

 hard for their living, and mountain flax flourished. 

 The plough has crept stealthily up its sides, and 

 although the highest part is too cold for wheat, it is 

 kindly enough for oats and barley. It must have 

 required some nerve to settle under that bleak Moel-y- 

 Mabb, but Mr. Naylor forecasted well. Year by year, 

 the handsome design of Mr. Gee, built of the blue 



