228 COURSING 



day's sport is usually on Tanners' Down, the finals being run off 

 hard by the weird pile of Stonehenge. Headquarters are at 

 Amesbury, but Salisbury is of course available also, and if 

 only the weather is right the meeting is sure to be enjoyable. 

 Some old coursers think Amesbury Downs the finest coursing 

 ground in England, and certainly the 'going ' is better for grey- 

 hounds' feet than the flinty downs at Stockbridge ; but on a wet 

 day there is no escape from the downpour, and late in the year 

 the wind makes itself very strongly felt in the elevated positions. 

 Down coursing is essentially a fine- weather pastime, for rain 

 and wind which would hardly inconvenience the crowd on 

 Cliffe Marshes, or on the Lancashire coast, seem to come in 

 the form of hurricanes here, and the severest wetting I ever 

 got when watching the long-tails was in a twenty minutes' 

 storm on Tanners' Down. The force of it was quite strong 

 enough to * unsight ' the only pair of greyhounds slipped during 

 the time of its continuance. 



WEST CUMBERLAND CLUB 



Coursing meetings have been held in the Whitehaven 

 district for many generations, and, indeed, love of the leash is 

 so inherent in Cumberland men that it is really difficult to 

 say in what part of the country there has not been coursing, out 

 of the mountain district. There is, however, no doubt that the 

 Ground Game Act had a severe effect here for some years 

 after it had been passed, and it was only when that ardent 

 courser, Mr. Anthony Dixon, took matters into his own hands, 

 that the sport began to look up again. Mr. Dixon began very 

 young as a public courser, almost his first purchase being the 

 brother and sister Record and Requisite by Hector from Netley 

 Burn, which pair he afterwards renamed Dunmail and Disguise. 

 Both were fast greyhounds, a fact that was clearly proved when 

 they got to the end of Gosforth Derby and Oaks respectively, 

 and while the former won some good stakes for his new owner, 

 the last-named a beautiful bitch of the seldom-seen colour of 



