THE POX. 325 



"I believe that the first real steady pack of Foxhounds established in 

 the western part of England was by Thomas Fownes, Esq., of Stapleton, in 

 Dorsetshire, about the year 1730. They were as handsome and fully as 

 complete in every respect as any of the most celebrated packs of the present 

 day (1818). The owner, meeting with some worldly disappointments, was 

 obliged to dispose of them, and they were sold to Mr. Bowes in Yorkshire, 

 the father of the late Lady Strathmore, at an immense price for those days. 

 They were taken into Yorkshire by their own attendants, and after having 

 been viewed and much admired in their kennel, a day was fixed for making 

 trial of them in the field, to meet at a famous gorse-cover near." 



After describing the result, namely, two splendid runs, both 

 of which ended in a "kill," the writer continues : — 



" This pack was probably the progenitors of the very fine ones used in 

 the north. Before this pack was raised in Dorsetshire, the hounds which 

 hunted in Cranbourne Chase hunted all animals promiscuously, except the 

 deer, from which they were necessarily made steady, otherwise they would 

 not have been suffered to hunt at all in it." 



But assuming that Mr. Chafin is right as regards Dorset- 

 shire, and that Mr. Fownes's pack of Foxhounds was the first 

 raised in that county, or even, as he says, in the West of 

 England, it is certain that riding to Foxhounds was a sport 

 practised in other parts of England at least fifty years previously. 

 We have only to turn to the descriptions and plates in Blome's 

 fine folio work, • The Gentleman's Becreation,' published in 1686, 

 to be convinced of this. Here we find the old mode of Fox- 

 hunting contrasted with the new. 



After remarking that "the country people receiving great 

 damages from foxes by their destruction of poultry, rabbits, 

 lambs, &c, were not wanting in their endeavours to destroy 

 them," he explains the method employed : — 



" And the ways by them used (by what I can understand) was by a great 

 company of people, with dogs of all kinds, assembled together, to go to 

 such woods and coverts where they thought they were, and so to beset the 

 place, whilst others went in to beat and force them out with some of the 

 dogs, to be either coursed by the rest of the dogs, or taken in nets or bags 

 set on the outsides for that purpose. But of late years, by experience, the 

 mother of invention, the knowledge of this is arrived to far greater per- 

 fection, being now become a very healthful recreation to such as delight 

 therein ; so that I shall in a brief and clear method give you a modern 

 account of Fox-hunting as it is at this day (1686) used by the most expert 

 in this chase." 



