a little plantation as he set his head for the Stone Pits. The hounds then found at Grimston Gorse, but we saw them no more.

He

On this very day the Duke's had some good sport at Ropsley Rise. Their first fox was a bad one, and was killed after ringing about in covert for an hour. The second gave them twenty minutes to ground in a drain, racing pace all the way. A couple of bitches were missing from this point, Clara a daughter of Comus, and Careful a daughter of Chaser, and a whip was sent back, while Will went on to draw for another fox, which gave him a capital fifty minutes over a very severe country to ground again. The whip reached home without either of the bitches, but Will was so sure they were there, that the boiler was despatched next morning, and after digging a long time he found them both on their backs, in sludge and dirt, and unable to move. got them out alive at the end of twenty-six hours, but the fox had bolted. Will had once a Black-hole business of this kind on a more extended scale. The first year he was huntsman, he sent his whip to stop a large head of earths in Woolsthorpe Cliff Wood. He took a pet terrier with him, which got into the earth unseen by him. After stopping all up, he went home, thinking the terrier had gone too; no notice was taken till the next day, when Will had the holes opened, and so on for several days; but no terrier forthcoming, they were all well stopped up again. After three weeks and three days the terrier was seen scratching and squeezing himself out of one of them, which he succeeded in doing, and staggered away home and scratched at the door for admittanco. When Mrs. Robinson (the whip's wife) let him in, he was nothing but skin and bones, such a spectacle as man has never beheld. However, he took no harm, and was quite well in a week. There was no doubt a very bountiful larder in the earths, in the shape of bones, which he had lived on all the time.

Less luck befell two of the best and handsomest fox-terriers that ever graced the Belvoir kennels; so good that they might have been easily sold for their weight in silver. Will took them out one day in October, (a very wet one) when they had a very extraordinary run of at least sixteen miles point to point, and of course the two terriers were absent, although he saw them within a very short distance of the finish. The poor creatures were out five very wet days after that, and came home both together. They looked quite pitifully up in his face, and then died both together in less than half an hour after they entered the kennel from sheer exhaustion.

On Tuesday the 9th, the Duke's met again at Caythorpe, and had a magnificent field. They commenced drawing at General Reeve's covert, where a brace or more foxes were at home, which the hounds could scarcely acknowledge, as the scent was so very bad. After about fifteen minutes in covert one went away, but the scent still the same, and they could scarcely hunt him out of the first field. They, however, hunted him slowly for a mile, and lost him. They then trotted away to Fulbeck Hill, which they drew with Leadenham blank; but just as Will was drawing his hounds away from the covert, an old veteran jumped out of some turnips adjoining, and away they went like a flock of carrierpigeons, through Fulbeck Hill top, and trying the drains at Caythorpe, which were shut; he then bore away again up the hill, to the earths at Normanton, which were also closed; he then set his head straight for the woodlands, going past Carlton and up the valley to Sudbrooke away over Honington Hill, leaving Syston on the right, through Gipple

plantation, pointing for Ropsley Rise, but was headed to the right to Belton Park. They then gave him one ring through Bellmount, and Sir John Thorold's plantation, when he again made his original point; but they overtook him, and killed him in the field adjoining Gipple Plantation, after a most excellent and well-executed run of one hour and fifteen minutes.

Two days afterwards, Mr. Assheton Smith's bitches had a very nice thing, of which a correspondent sends us the following terse sketch: "Met at Red Rice the seat of Rev. Best, who gave a breakfast to about a hundred, a good many of them pinks. Squire Farquharson, in the famous white collar, looked well, and excited a good deal of attention. Sir E. Antrobus, on his black horse, acted as master of the day. The bitch pack looked most beautiful on the lawn, which has a pretty back-ground, with clumps of fine trees. After an hour of blank covers they found three in one cover, scent very uncertain and in patches; in cover they settled to one and rattled him famously, until he was viewed clear away over a big fallow. After fifty-seven minutes, which included some very pretty hunting, and a sharp burst up to Danebury Hill, he was killed in a cover so close, that he was half-eaten before Carter could get to them. The ground dry and the sun hot, and very unfavourable for scent, but I never saw hounds work better. At one check, as Carter was making a cast forward, they made one for themselves along a hedge-row to the left, hitting it off beautifully. With a little more scent it would have been a most brilliant day, and we might with so good a fox have run from Danes Hill to Amesbury. Mrs. Brewer and four young ladies were out, and each very forward, particularly one very young lady on a well bred grey horse. This is a country well suited for ladies, being so open. The South Western Railway brings hunting-men from Basingstoke and Andover, where they can pick from the Vine, the H. H., the South Berks, and the Tedworth. The country includes a great extent of light chalk downs, without the awful hills of Surrey, no ditches, and fences light. Tollitt, of Streatham, has this season opened stables at Basingstoke one hour-and-a-quarter from Waterloo Station), where hunters can be hired for the day, or longer, or purchased."

JAMES

MORRELL,

ESQ.

(LATE MASTER OF THE OLD BERKSHIRE),

ENGRAVED BY J. B. HUNT, AFTER THE ORIGINAL PICTURE BY FRANCIS GRANT, ESQ., R.A.

Eighteen-fifty-eight has played sad havoc with many, both of the eldest and the choicest in the once serried M. F. H. ranks. Earl Fitzhardinge and Assheton Smith have passed away; Essex and Suffolk also look in vain at the cover-side for the kindly presence of Mr. Nunn; Lord Scarborough and Sir Watkin Wynne have given up the horn for a time; and Mr. Farquharson and Mr. Morrell, the sterling types of the old and new school of masters, have resigned the trust which they held for the white collars of Dorsetshire and the men of the Old Berkshire. Mr. Morrell was born in 1810, and his father early entered him to

the sport in which he was destined shortly to play so prominent a part.
He was, in fact, little more than nine when he saw his first fox killed
with Mr. Codrington; and Eton, and constant practice during the winter
holidays with his father's harriers, fostered his fancy to the full. The
pack originally consisted of fourteen couple of the old Southern breed,
and on one occasion they adopted currant-jelly tastes of a higher order,
and had a buck turned down before them in the presence of half Oxford,
on the very hill where Mr. Morrell's splendid house now stands, looking
down on the forest of church and college pinnacles beneath. In 1836
he took the hounds in hand himself, and hunted them for eleven seasons,
in the country round Oxford and on Ilsley Downs. Latterly, they had
immense sport, and not a few of the hard-riding sons of Alma Mater
date their earliest chase-experiences from the lectures on the noble
science and the cheery gallops they had with "Jim Morrell," as both
town and gown delighted to call him. Young John Day, who was then
with a veterinary surgeon in Oxford, was one of the most constant repre-
sentatives of the former; and few who looked at his eleven-and-a-half-
stone figure tearing across the downs in the wake of a "straight backed
'un" dreamt that he would some day become the distinguished eight-stone
jockey, with whom so few cared to have a race home. The pack was
principally kept up by drafts from Mr. Drake's, The Heythrop, and
The Blackmore Vale (Mr. Yeatman's), and consisted at last of twenty-
two couple of small foxhound bitches, and Hannibal, who had a strong
touch of the harrier about him, and never failed to set "the ladies"
right at a pinch.

The desired opportunity at last arrived, and on March 21, 1848, the
harriers were parted with, and Mr. Morrell took from Mr. Morland,
that Old Berkshire country, which Lord Kintore and "merry John
Walker" had made so famous. Foxes had become sadly short, and in
their last season John Jones had drawn Buscot no less than twenty-one
times. The services of "Jack" were transferred in due course to Mr.
Morrell, and twenty-four couple of his old favourites came along with
him to the Tubney kennels. In his first summer Mr. Morrell entered
three-and-twenty couple, and took half Mr. Drake's draft with Mr. A.
Thompson, who then hunted the Atherstone country. The kennel
was full of Assheton Smith and Wyndham blood, and Mr. Morrell was
thoroughly rewarded for his allegiance to the Warrior, or rather the
Old Berkshire Whirlwind sort, in the 1850 entry of his Foreman, by
the former out of Faithful. In the same year the union of Berkshire
and Tedworth blood in Gratitude and Saffron produced Sunderland; and
Trumpeter, Bosphorus and Rutland, Fleecer (a great Berkshire pet),
Spangle, Stickler, Sportsman, Boxer, and Bobadil were the plums of
1851-56. At the close of 1855 Mr. Morrell purchased his Quorn lot
for 210 gs., for the sake of the Hercules' blood, and the cross of the
old blue with Spangle by Sunderland nicked so well, that he entered
seven of them, including the prize dog and bitch (Harlequin and
Honesty) in 1857. The entries by this dog, who died a few weeks
before the sale, after serving some twenty couple of bitches from all
kennels, numbered 27 in his two seasons; and Fitzhardinge Hector
(23), Bosphorus (21), Sunderland (20), Foreman (17), Fleecer (13),
and Trumpeter (11), were the other principal sires into whom Clarke
dipped. Casting one's eye down the "sire" line alone, in that pleasant-
looking thin scarlet octavo, which records the Tubney kennel history,
we find a strong infusion, during John Jones's day, of the Drake blood;