2o8 COURSING 



5/. ios., to which is added a handsome cup, given conjointly 

 by Mr. E. R. Lightfoot of Cowley and Messrs. Elkington of 

 Regent Street, London. This stake usually produces a very 

 good class of greyhound, and is a most coveted trophy amongst 

 southern coursers. 



The meeting extends over three, and sometimes four days, 

 and headquarters are at the King's Arms Hotel, Southminster, 

 where there is a largely attended dinner each evening. Most 

 of the regular habitues of the fixture go to the same lodgings 

 each year, for the hotel can only accommodate a very small 

 portion of the visitors, and so the cottagers have to make pro- 

 visions for strangers. I can safely affirm that the accommodation 

 set forth, though primitive in appearance, is spotlessly clean and 

 extraordinarily cheap ; there is none of the * fleecing ' existent 

 at other places, and it is a well-known fact that coursers who 

 have once been to Southminster always want to go back when 

 the meeting comes round. 



Whilst I am on this subject of quarters I may mention, too, 

 that the change in diet is very welcome ; for it is the fashion 

 during the sojourn in the village to live upon oysters and 

 widgeon, both of which are procured in their native excellence 

 on the spot. Indeed, the oyster carts follow the coursing all 

 day long, and wonderful are the stories as to the vast quantities 

 of Burnham natives which have been swallowed by some of 

 the midland division, who have come from a country where the 

 bivalve is an unaccustomed luxury. The widgeon are brought 

 from the decoy close at hand, and no one is thought to have 

 done his Southminster meeting properly unless he gets through 

 at least one each evening at dinner. As a rule, the widgeon is 

 a bird that is not much esteemed, but cooked in Southminster 

 fashion he becomes a veritable tit-bit, as witness hundreds of 

 attesting coursers. 



The system was thus explained to me : 'You wring the 

 bird's neck, then cut an incision in the skin (of the neck) and lay 

 a piece back all round. With one quick stroke you then chop 

 the head off, and sew the skin over, without allowing a drop of the 



