Hunt Uniform
All these officials should wear the recognised uniform of foot beagles green coats, white drill breeches, and green stockings. In many packs distinctively coloured coat-collars or waistcoats are worn, and a proper hunt button is usual, as this may be worn by the subscribing members of the field (who will, of course, be in mufti) as an identifying badge-whether in the shape of brooch, scarf-pin, hat-pin, or button-hole. The day when the officials of a pack of foot beagles could go hunting in any old clothes has, happily, long since gone by, and a uniform that lends dignity to the chase is now de rigueur. As beagling is at times a breathless business, the huntsman will be well advised if he use a Köhler reed horn in place of an ordinary one.
Kennels for foot beagles or bassets are very inexpensive affairs. Even if some outbuilding cannot be adapted at small cost, complete beagle-kennels are to be had readymade from any of several well-known firms, such as Boulton and Paul, of Norwich, at prices as low as £30. The chief thing to attend to is efficient drainage and a good dry floor, if the curse of many beagle packskennel lameness is to be avoided. Hounds may be purchased occasionally as a pack, or in the shape of drafts from well-known kennels. If economy be an object in the first instance, beagles of sorts may be bought cheaply from various dealers at very low prices, and subsequently weeded out as experience sets a higher standard of efficiency and an increasing subscription list provides the means of improving the pack. £2 a couple is about the lowest sum for which any sort of "working hounds" can be purchased. It is not a bad plan to have a terrier running with the pack, especially in a hedgerow country, as he will often put out a beaten hare that, with a failing scent, has jumped aside into a furze-bush or ditch, when hounds are finally at fault, and she would otherwise have to be given up.
People who bring out pet dogs with beagles -as far too many women do, incredible as it seems should be politely requested to take them home, and farmers and shepherds should be asked to lead their dogs whenever hounds are drawing or running. Numberless hunts with beagles and bassets are spoiled by the presence of loose "cur-dogs" in the fields and on the adjacent roads.
Before advertising his meets, the new Master should have a series of bye-days, meeting early in the morning at six or seven o'clock-in September, accompanied only by his staff and the local farmers, in order to drill hounds and staff alike and perfect them in their work so as to take the field on the opening day with confidence and some chance of success. Beagling, unlike fox-hunting, is not an all-day pursuit; indeed, many packs, supported largely by keen sportsmen whom unkind fate has perchance condemned to stools in the public offices, do not meet until afternoon. Also it is a very arduous exercise and takes a lot out of both hounds and the followers who habitually run up to them. Three or four hours' hunting in one day is quite as A KILL. much as is good for either, and the Master whose pack, meeting at eleven and finding at once, enjoys a couple of good spins of perhaps an hour and a half's duration apiece, will be better advised to knock off at two o'clock than to go on drawing and perhaps find a strong hare that will keep them at it till dusk.
Hare-hunting with foot harriers, beagles, or bassets is conducted on precisely similar lines. Hounds draw for their hare, the field spreading itself in a line behind the Master and whippers-in, beating the tussocks, bushes, and hedges with sticks, and cracking the thongs of their crops to rouse the quarry. When puss is moved, a single loud "See ho!" should be given to compel her to get well into her stride, when, if hounds have not caught a view, they should be taken quietly but quickly to the first gap through which she goes, and laid on the line. A good "cry" of beagles with a useful scent should then be able to do their work unaided, sticking closely to their hunted hare, despite others getting up, casting themselves, and puzzling out the "work" of puss until they draw up to her and put her up again. When the hare is getting beaten and her scent begins to fail, it will be time for the Master to take hounds in hand, and, if necessary to lift them to a holloa in order to consummate the day's run, if possible, with a kill. Blood is more necessary to beagles than to other hounds, and the Master of Foot Beagles should never give up a beaten hare until he is obliged. No one who has not studied the natural habits of the hare over a series of years can hope to become a really efficient Master of Beagles, for it is only the accumulated results of this systematic course of study that will help him to judge where his quarry is when he and the hounds have lost her.
If he be lucky, there may be some old hare-hunter among his supporters, who, famous amateur huntsmen of fox-hounds have-like the late Colonel Anstruther- Thomson-learned the elements of their sport as Masters of Foot Beagles. Its popularity is also due in part to its inexpensive character, which places it within the reach of practically anybody with five shillings in his pocket. The cost of keeping beagles is comparatively small, and a good many packs that show the best of sport are BREAKING HER UP. without trying to run up, yet comes out to see what sport he may from the vantagepoint of hill or rising ground. To such the Master should present a whistle with the request that, should he see the hunted hare -for which he will never mistake a fresh one-when hounds are silent, he will blow it and so advertise her whereabouts. The Master will not necessarily lift hounds to the whistle each time he hears it sounded, but it will be a useful guide to him in getting hounds forward on the line of the quarry.
The popularity of foot beagling is due partly to the fact that it is a genuine sport, calling for the exercise of the true science of hunting, and being noticeably fair to the hunted beast. Indeed, many of our most maintained on an expenditure of little over £50 a year.
L. C. R. CAMERON.
STOAT-HUNTING WITH BEAGLES. - Some few packs of beagles are employed during the summer months in the pursuit of the stoat, a sport that might well be developed, though not every hare-hunting country is adapted to it. A fairly open, stone-wall country with small coverts, and not much arable land, is best suited to stoathunting. Where most of the land is under crops, or where winged game is heavily preserved though there the stoat is most numerous-the "Master of Stoat Hounds" will hardly be welcomed, although, were he to hunt in April, May, and early June, he could do but little damage either to young birds or growing grass or corn, and might usefully destroy a fair head of these vicious little vermin, as during these months stoats travel in "trips" or family parties, and cover extraordinary distances in a night.
Four or five couples of hounds and a terrier or so are sufficient to take out at a time, and the method of procedure is similar to that employed in otter-hunting, or in the now almost forgotten sport of marten-hunting, formerly pursued in Cumberland and elsewhere. The pack goes out early, and, picking up the drag of the stoat, trails him to the stone wall, clitter of rocks, or other refuge in which he has laid himself up for BEAGLES-ENGLAND.
Airedale.
Aldershot.
Allott's, Mr.
Beresford Dale.
Berkhamsted.
Berwick, Foot.
Brighton.
Britannia.
Bronwydd.
Buckland.
Bushey Heath.
Butcher's, Mr.
Chawston.
Cheshire.
Christ Church (Oxon).
Cockermouth.
Constable's, Mr.
Durham.
Exeter College (Oxon).
THE BRIXTON, S.W. the day. When hounds "mark," they are held up at a little distance while the quarry is dislodged, either by the removal of some stones, or, better, by the introduction of a few puffs of tobacco smoke. The stoat will go off at his best pace, and, being given a little law, will often afford a smart run of from two to four miles before being overtaken. The Bellmount Beagles in County Cork are the only hounds that advertise meets for stoat-hunting; but other packs pursue the sport unostentatiously, while at least one sportsman maintains a small cry of ten- to eleven-inch beagles expressly for stoat-hunting, and accounts for thirty or forty head annually in a short season.
LIST OF PACKS.
Forest and District.
Furness and District.
Gogerddan.
Gosport and Fareham.
Greaves, Mr.
Halstead Place.
Hinton.
Holliday's, Mr.
Horsell.
Hulton.
Instow.
Inwood.
Leigh Park.
Lichfield Garrison.
Linton.
Longdendale.
Malden's, Lord.
Marland.
Maryport.
Newcastle and District.
New College and Magdalen.
STAG. By staghunting we here imply the chase of the deer with a pack of hounds on horseback, or, as it was formerly called, "hunting at force," as distinguished from the earlier form of sport, in which the horse and hound were used only as subsidiary to the hunter's main object, which was either the killing of the deer with a weapon-a form of staghunting which dates back into the mists of Egyptian history-or, to quote a mediæval writer, one Christopher Ware, gentleman, "the forestalling him with nets and engines."
History of the Hunt. There is no doubt that hunting at force existed at a very early period in Britain, and it is difficult to trace its exact origin or account for its partial desuetude in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. William of Malmesbury states of Edward the Confessor that he delighted " to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with his voice"; upon the other hand, Mr. Hore, in his History of the Buckhounds, gives Edward