OBSERVATIONS, FROM PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE, ON OLD ENGLISH SPORTS.

THE FORESt, field, anD RIVER; THE KENNEL, THE STABLE, AND THE GUN.

BY THE HON. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY, M.P.

(Continued from page 174.)

RANSOM, mentioned by Mr. Vyner in the last number of the REVIEW, was bred by Lord Fitzhardinge, at Berkeley Castle, and entered by me at Harrold Hall. She was the smallest as well as one of the best bitches I ever saw in a foxhound kennel. The cause of her prick-ear was as follows: on a high windy day, while drawing Lousacre for a fox, I heard a distant halloo towards Odell Wood. We all heard it, the hounds as well as myself, though none of us seemed certain of its exact direction. We were, as was our usual wont, silently attentive, but going best pace together to reach the halloo as soon as possible, when Little Ransom came too close beneath me, and my horse, Steeltrap, who had very high action, struck her on the ear with his forefoot.

The mention of this circumstance recalls to my mind many a scene in Yardley Chase, an extensive and beautiful woodland belonging to Lord Northampton, neutral between the Grafton country and the Bedfordshire. It was in and from these woodlands that in one season I found seventeen foxes, and killed thirteen with a run. They are the best scenting covers in the Bedfordshire country; and, though foxes were never over well preserved in them, they were, from their extent and nature, sure to hold a fox. Collier's Urn, Cowper's Oak, and the corner of the Chase next Castle Ashby, on the Denton side, were sure to afford a find; and often have I heard the murmurs of my field (murmurs totally disregarded by me; all huntsmen who know their duty should ever disregard the wild murmurs of the many), as I trotted along the rides past good-looking places, to reach these spots, exclaiming "What a pity not to draw these quarters!" The sequel, however, always proved that I was right; and to-morrow, if old Rose was at the head of the Grafton hounds again, or if George Carter was going to meet in the Chase, I'll be bound, on a glance at the wind, that I named the spot where they would begin to draw. In extensive woodlands there are always favourite haunts of the fox, as well as there are favourite fields for a hare, or gravel pits or swampy places for a jacksnipe, and to be possessed of sufficient observation to know where to find either the one or the other, saves an infinity of trouble. An ignorant huntsman will expend the vigour of his hounds, and the best of the day, in drawing likely-looking, but uncertain places, first. An ignorant courser or harrier master will turn over good-looking fallows, without a reflection that, though they appear to be the sort of places on which he has found hares, yet hares were never known to be seated there; and a foolish gunner, on the first of September, will, at day

It

break, bathe in high and dewy turnips, because, at noon-day, when turnips were dry, in exercising his dogs he has sprung the covey in similar places. A little quiet observation and a knowledge of natural history will obviate all these errors, that is, when the mind of the sportsman is capable of entertaining more ideas than one. To be on a horse and behind hounds is an extent of exhilarating knowledge which absorbs the intellect of many men; indeed, I know a family, where one brother affects the huntsman, the other the courser, and the third the shot, but not one of them attempts to do all these things together, and none of them attain success in any one. But to return to Yardley Chase. It is a beautiful woodland: whether you approach it in spring, summer, autumn, or winter, there is always something to admire. ought to swarm with foxes and game, but, when I left it, it abounded with neither. In spring you may hunt there when excluded from smaller places; it is longer moist than the higher ground-holds a scent when other portions of the country are deficient of even a line; and if you love nature, and delight in looking at the earliest indication of her genial passions, there you will hear the soothing note of the earliest ringdove, the first rich melody of the truant nightingale, and find the forwardest buds of the willow and hazel, to say nothing of the primrose, which peeps even at the snow, in the sheltered dell. There, over the old magpie or crow's nest, ticks and hovers the kestrel-hawk, an earlier dreamer of the nesting day than any bird of similar habits; and at times, along the beautiful green rides of the Chase, may be seen, or, at least, used occasionally to be seen, the female human form divine, beautiful enough to make the healthful huntsman dream of scenes where hound was never heard.

It was in Yardley Chase where I so often had cause to admire the reasoning and penetrating qualities of the noble foxhound! To hear a halloo in the wind, at a great distance; to be uncertain as to its meaning; to pause in the ride, and listen; to see the dear companions of my leisure hours come forth of the tangled brushwood to listen, too, and be ready to race down the rides when their suspicions were confirmed; to see them, with their heads turning from side to side, look up to me for better advice, and then, when we were all alive to the incident of the moment, to hear the distant halloo taken up and repeated by a nearer friend; to cry to the pack to "hark to the halloo," and then to follow them, and watch the beautiful precision with which they race down one ride and up the other, to save the loss of time in forcing their way through thick cover, were moments of excitement and delight, the remembrance of which the cool hand of age will never obliterate. While speaking of the hound in the cover ride, let me here observe upon a very common fault among men. When the pack are running for a fox in cover, hounds, by some turn which the bystanders do not perceive, are often thrown wide of the line, and made to tail. These knowing, through their beautiful ear and keen perception, that the cry is breasting or running parallel with the ride, will often flash into, and race up it, to cut in again with the leading hounds. This is particularly observable in hounds usually master of, and able to kill their foxes, and in the hound, this desire to be at the head is no fault whatever. In spite of this, how often do we see an ignorant booby, in boots and spurs, crack his whip in the face of one

of these honest and industrious animals, and, instead of moving quietly out of the more sagacious creature's way, and giving him room to take his rightful place, drive him away into the brambles, and to the tail of the pack, adding to the work of the labouring hound, and to the chance of the fox escaping. If a fox be beaten, all good sportsmen should lend their aid to the hounds to kill that fox as soon as possible, for the simple reason that you can have no run with a beaten fox, whereas, if you kill him quickly, the hounds are fresh enough to give you a run with another. An instance, this season, of the necessity for judicious aid, when an individual can render it, happened to me with Mr. Drax's hounds, at Charborough Park. We had run a fox, I think, about forty minutes, and came to a check near the tower in the park. With very proper patience, Mr. Drax withheld the information he deemed he was possessed of, till John Last had made an ineffectual cast; then Mr. Drax told him that, from a hill, he had seen what he thought was the fox, crossing the low plains of the park, but at so great a distance, and for so short a space, that it was impossible to feel certain as to whether he had seen a fox or not. The hounds were cast for the spot of the supposed view, they hit the scent, and ran up to their fox in a little cover adjoining the park fence. Here it was evident that the fox was dying. The ground at last being foiled, I moved my horse into a stained ditch under the fence, to put the fox from his over-trod line. He came, the pack at his brush; when, to avoid me, he made a running leap at the fence, and succeeded in reaching the top of it, where he hung for a second, long enough to enable me, by dashing forward, to catch him by the back, and fling him down. In three minutes after, the hounds killed him. This fox was more beaten than I conceived him to be; but had he been a stouter one, and had he got over that fence, there being no way immediately available of getting the hounds after him, he might, without affording a farther run, have held us at work so long as to render a draw for a second fox inadmissible. As it was, the pack were fresh enough, after killing this fox, to find another, and to kill him also, after a good thing, in and out of cover, of an hour and forty minutes. As regards the huntsman of this pack, John Last, I think him an excellent servant. He is very steady, very persevering, and very zealous; is always there or thereabouts with his hounds; he knows the line of a fox as well as any man; and no huntsman turns out a hound in better condition. In addition to this, his manners as a servant are particularly becoming. Now then for two errors in John Last; one of them proceeds from his natural civility, the other is not so easily to be palliated or excused. The first and minor fault is,-that he attends too much, when in a difficulty, to the suggestions of his field, and he does not keep that field sufficiently in order. Men ride here, and halloo there, advise this and recommend that, in a way which deserves the severest reprehension; and were they to be out with many masters of hounds with whom I am acquainted, they would be fervently denounced as delinquents of innumerable colours! I have often wondered that the squire permits this state of things to continue. The second, and the greater fault is,-that John Last, who has as nice, as shrill, and clear a view-halloo as any man, view-halloos his hounds into a gorse to draw it-that is, he cheers his hounds in to look for the fox with the same note that he uses when he views a fox, and wishes to get them away.

Now, in the enormous and beautiful gorses which belong to the Charborough country, how is it possible that, when the same note is used for two especially different purposes, the hounds can understand the difference of the act they are called on to perform? If you use hounds to draw with a view-halloo, and then, when they are buried in a wide and tangled gorse, you give that same view-halloo again, of course they can know no difference in the passing events which men may see, and they conceive that it is a continuation of the previous encouragement to draw for a fox, and they go on with the work they were sent in by that halloo to perform. It is folly to expect that hounds will do two opposite things on one and the same word, and hence frequently arises a delay in getting close away with a viewed fox, unless either a master or man is at hand, to assist with the doubled note of the horn. If the halloo of the viewer of the fox resembles the halloo of John Last, I have observed that the hounds do not fly to it; but if the halloo be a hoarser one, or an indifferent one, like my own, then the hounds are aware that it is different from the one that cheered them to draw, and they go to it with corresponding celerity. A view-halloo should speak for itself, and but to one fact, and never be used but in cheering hounds to a fox. The hounds should know that, when they heard it, there existed the glorious fun, and they ought to race-to fly to the spot-silent and fast as greyhounds from the leash, or like a flock of pigeons. Having now, as a reviewer, spoken of the only two faults that I perceive in John Last, I proceed to other matters.

I had been coursing in the New Forest on the day after I had written thus far; I had dined, and my tablets were again lying at my elbow. On the dining-table still remained the dessert, while a plate of crisp biscuits, flanked by the larger portion of a bottle of port and sherry, looked comfortably up into my face and at the fire, as if inviting me to continue a discussion of their merits. Oh, but it was a pretty sight to see a hundred little fires reflected, and flickering in the ruddy sides of the generous bottles, and to view the magnificent form of my favourite deer greyhound, Odin, stretched at length on the genial rug! I felt we were comfortable, listened to the roar of the heavy swell of the sea, as it broke in the bay beneath my window, stirred the fire, filled my glass, and had high notions of the castles of Englishmen.

My dining-room is an odd room: it is filled with trophies of the chase. Antlers of the red and fallow-deer, horns of the roe-buck, many of them pulled down by Odin and his forefathers, with brushes of the fox, grace the tables, chimney-pieces, and bell-ropes; while stuffed otters and badgers, and cases of all sorts of birds, are arranged around the walls in numberless variety. It is my wont frequently to wax thoughtful after dinner and a hard day, and sometimes even to get into a sort of dream, during which the specimens of departed creatures around me seem to come out of their cases, and converse on the scenes of their former haunts. On the evening of which I speak, the last thing that I am positively certain of, previous to the following occurrence, was, that I finished my glass of wine, gave a biscuit to Odin, and fixed my eyes on a vacant chair at the corner of the table, on the other side of the fire-place, directly opposite me. Gradually this chair became filled; either the chimney smoked, or the fumes of charcoal ascended from the kitchen. Closing my eyes to avoid annoyance,

when I opened them again I beheld a tall, swart, portly man, dressed in a frock of the darkest green; his legs accoutred in huge jack-boots, with a couteau de chasse at his side; a large pair of coal-black mustaches; and a dog-leash in his hand, seated in the chair, and coolly assisting himself to a tumbler of port wine.

He never said, by your leave; but, nodding familiarly, exclaimed, "Your health, my boy! I like port; but there are some in this, and the adjoining county, who like claret."

There was so much good-nature in the twinkle of the stranger's merry, but rather bloodshot eye, and such an evident relish of the wine in the smack of his bearded lip, with so much cozy humour, as he stretched his stalwart legs before the fire, that I found not in my heart to be angry at his intrusion; but, with a relish equal to his own, I refilled and emptied my glass, and gazed in silence for some voluntary explanation on his part.

"I dare say you want to know who I am," he began, my business is with you?"

"I should like to know," I replied.

" and what

"Well, then," he said, "there's no ceremony between us. who hunts the Hartz mountains."

"At night?" I rejoined.

I'm he

"At night," said he; and here he assisted himself to another tumbler of wine, dislodged a red-hot coal with the toe of his boot, put his hands on his knees, and leaned slightly forward, as if to see the effect of his information.

"You ride over a rough country," I continued, " and feed with wildish stuff, judging from what you threw at the jager, when he wished you good sport. Is yours a good scenting country, and are your farmers pretty civil?-fields in pretty good order, and your resident proprietors heart and hand in good fellowship and preservation of the things you hunt? You hunt stag, don't you-deer I mean, and not over fat?"

"I do," replied the black huntsman of the Hartz mountains; "I hunt the stag. But I say, my boy, don't you quote any of those unsavoury passages you may have read about me, or the sport I follow; they are all lies, and are only better than the lies of your Dorset County Chronicle, because they are not anonymous."

"I beg your pardon; help yourself," I rejoined. My guest did so, and continued :—

"Thank you; your port wine's good; and now to business. I've got a devilish wild young imp under my care, who wants to be roughed a little, to keep him in his place; they say my country is too good for him, and too well managed; but that things are in such a state in the adjoining county to you (nodding his head towards Dorchester), that, as he is too fond of the sport, and wants the keen edge of his taste to be blunted a little, I can't do better than send him there."

"Things are in an unhappy state," I replied, " and I see no signs of fairer weather. It is a sad pity that some arrangement cannot be entered into between the opposing parties. I have thrown out a suggestion or two, but no one seems inclined to take them up. I grant that a master of hounds, while in possession of a country, is in the light