Hunt And Working Terriers

By Jocelyn Lucas

Originally published in 1931. Probably the best book ever published on this subject. The author was a well known hunting man and breeder of Sealyham terriers. The well illustrated contents include: Historical References - Using Terriers with Foxhounds - Attributes of a Good Working Terrier - Opinions and Yarns - Hunt Terriers in the USA - In India - Hunting in China - On Earth Stopping and Artificial Earths - Question of Pedigree - Question of Coats - Breeders Opinions - Otterhound Packs - A Day with Border Terriers and Otterhounds - Otter Hunting with Terriers - The Rev. Jack Russell and his Terriers - The Old English Black and Tan Terrier - The Border Terrier - The Fox Terrier - Lakeland, Fell or Patterdale Terrier - Norwich or Trumpington Terriers - Scottish Terriers as Workers - The Sealyham Terrier - Training Terriers for Underground Work - Fox and Badger Digging - How to Dig and Take Foxes and Badgers - How to Work Bassetts - Badger Digging - Rats, Stoats, Hares and Rabbits - Boar Hunting with Terriers - Big Game Hunting with Terriers - Breeders - Clubs etc. Many of the earliest dog and hunting books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447497974

Book preview

1807

Hunt and Working Terriers

CHAPTER I

SOME HISTORICAL INACCURACIES

QUOTATIONS from old authorities must not be taken too literally, for it should be remembered that many inaccuracies have become historical facts owing to their having been copied by later writers, a fact not fully realised by the majority of people. To illustrate my point. I will quote from the Gentleman’s Recreation (Nicholas Cox, 1674).

In a section of the book dealing with the hunting of foreign animals, he says of the elk: "He is coloured for the most part like a Hart, and hath cloven feet, but without joints (like an elephant) in his forelegs, and therefore sleepeth leaning to posts or trees. . . .

They are taken by Nets and Foils or as Elephants are taken; for when they have found the trees whereunto they lean, they so cut and saw them, that when the Elk cometh, he over-throweth the tree, and falleth with it; and being not able to rise, is so taken alive.

Now the Latin naturalist Pliny Secundus hundreds of years before this had written: The elk hath neither joint in the hough nor pasternes in his hind leg. Therefore he never lieth down, but sleepeth leaning to a tree. And therefore the hunters that lie in wait for these beasts cut down the trees whilst they are asleep (!) and so take them, otherwise they would never be taken, so swift of foot they are, that it is wonderfull.

This was the English translation by Philemon Holland, and is quite obviously the source of Cox’s information, though doubtless it had appeared in print in the intervening period. But Pliny Secundus must not be blamed, for his authority in turn was no less a person than Ovid, who made that statement in his essays.

Where Ovid got it from I cannot imagine, but as it referred to the Norwegian elk, and travel was no easy matter in those days, it must be put down to travellers’ tales.

I only cite this one instance (although I could many others) to show how very careful one must be in verifying statements about the origin of breeds or strains before committing them to print, or inaccuracies may well be established as facts.

To come to more modern times, Dalziel, one of the greatest doggy scribes, writing about fifty years ago, stated that the Rev. Jack Russell had kept his strain of terriers pure since 1815, and had only once used an out-cross—a dog called Old Jock.

Now this statement and the one so often made, that he had his own breed of terriers, might well be accepted as facts, whereas they are quite the opposite. If proof is needed it can well be supplied by the statements of Lord Poltimore, joint Master of the Dulverton hounds in Devon, and of Mr. G. P. Williams, Master of the Four Burrow hounds in Cornwall, both of which will be found in another part of this book. The late Arthur Heinemann also bore witness to the fact that the sporting parson bought any terrier of the stamp he liked that would go to ground.

Old records are of great interest as regards the customs and manners of the times, and of the methods employed in hunting, but hearsay sometimes played as large a part as personal experience, and I have, therefore, omitted much about the natural history of the fox and badger as understood in earlier times. In one of his books, Mr. Richard Clapham says that the early sportsmen were great naturalists. With all due respect I think that this is a statement that needs some qualification.

Richard Bloome in his Gentleman’s Recreations¹ himself remarked that earlier writers put in more verbiage than substance, and what they did say was generally wrong!

¹ The two books of almost identical titles must not be confused.

CHAPTER II

MAINLY HISTORICAL

VENERIE was the sport of kings and nobles from time immemorial, but in older times the stag, the hare, the boar, and the wolf all ranked in front of the fox as beasts of the chase, even if the latter was hunted at all. Thus terriers only became allied to hounds in more recent times.

The first pack of hounds kept by anyone exclusively for fox hunting, according to Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, was that of Louis XIII of France. The pack still existed in 1691. It followed the king in all his travels, complete with terriers and digging tools! This information I get from my friend Mr. Thomas’ wonderful book, Hounds and Hunting through the Ages.¹

The date from which foxhounds were kept, as such, in England, is believed to be about 1690. A glance through Baily’s Hunting Directory tells us that the Gogerddon in Wales were going in 1696, the Brocklesley in 1700, the Holderness in 1726, the H. H. in 1745, the Belvoir in 1750 (it only became a foxhound pack twelve years later), the Duke of Beaufort’s in 1780, or thereabouts (they hunted stag before this), the Ynysfor (famous for its own strain of terriers) in 1765. There was also a Confederate pack in Wales in 1750. The majority of the older hunts not in this list were formed in the first forty years of the last century.

In Scotland we find the Berwickshire were in existence in 1740.

Queen Anne used to follow hounds on wheels. Probably the first instance of foxes being preserved for hunting on record was in 1591, when Sir James Cockayne stated that as woodlands were decreasing, so must gentlemen preserve badgers and foxes for their pleasure. The first known Master of foxhounds¹ in Great Britain was the second Duke of Buckingham, who died circa 1688, from a chill caught while hunting. He had kept his own pack in Yorkshire for many years before. Prior to that the aim of fox hunting was to kill the fox, and in the 15th century we are told that they were caught with greyhounds and nets.

As regards the remuneration of early huntsmen, Edward II gave his huntsman, Twici, 2d. a day, with 4s. 8d. a year for boots. The whips were paid 1 1/2d. a day. Money went further in those days.

Otter hunting is a more ancient form of sport than fox hunting, for King John created an official Master of Otterhounds, and made a law enforcing the preservation of the water polecat.

Otterhound packs are generally of more modern origin. The Carlisle pack dates back to 1830 (they were probably trencherfed for the first thirty years of their existence). The Culmstock go back to 1790, the Cheriton to 1846, and the West Cumberland to 1836. There were also packs in Devon and elsewhere that hunted fox, hare, deer, and otter indiscriminately.

Fox hunting in America is rather different. It is estimated that there are 1,500,000 hounds in America, 350,000 being kept in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia alone. These are more or less kept individually or in twos and threes for night hunting or hilltopping, as it is called.² Terriers would be of no use. There are also about ninety recognised packs in the country, hunting as we do in Britain. Few of these are more than fifty years old, but the Piedmont dates back to 1840 and Mr. Winston’s to 1858. Mr. E. V. Connett, the well-known American authority on sport, tells me that the first organised hunt in America was the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club, which was founded in 1766.

Frequent references to hunting occurred in Washington’s diary, for he kept hounds himself, and loved fox hunting.

According to Mr. Thomas, the first known Master of hounds in America was Robert Brooke, a cavalier who was born in London in June, 1602. In 1650 he sailed to America in his own ship, taking with him his family and servants, forty persons in all, and his pack of hounds. He landed at Della Brooke (Maryland), where I stayed for some shooting in 1929.

These hounds remained in the same family for nearly three hundred years, and form the taproot for American hounds. An importation was made by a Dr. Thomas Walker in 1742. His name is perpetuated in the Walker type hounds, which so often figure prominently in the American field trials.

This is not an essay on hounds and their origin, but these details are given to show that though fox hunting has been carried on for years, it has only become general during the last hundred and fifty years. This has an important bearing on terriers in type, conformation, and colour.

It should be borne in mind that the first dog show to be held in England took place barely seventy years ago, and that breeds and types were neither so numerous nor so definite as they are now.

The old English terrier was normally black-and-tan. White bodies probably resulted from one of two crosses. The first was the bulldog cross, frequently used, since such sports as badger baiting (drawing a badger from a barrel) and dog fighting were popular amusements. The rat pit was also the fashion, and we read of the famous dog Billy, who killed a hundred rats in five minutes. He was a white English terrier, with a patch on the side of his head. Large sums were wagered on such events. Nowadays people prefer to back horses or take a ticket in a sweepstake.

The beagle cross was used to get a terrier that would run with hounds, and it should be borne in mind that hounds were slower in those days. Nose and music counted far more than drive, so the terrier did not have to be so fast.

Terriers¹ were used so far back as the 15th century, for Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell Nunnery, speaks of Teroures, whilst in 1576 Dr. Caius wrote of the Terrarius. He writes, another sort there is that hunted the fox and badger only, whom we call terrars, they (after the manner and custom of ferrets in searching for coneys) creep into the ground, and by that means make afraid, nip and bite the fox and badger in such sort that either they tear them to pieces with their teeth, being in the earth, or else haul and pull them perforce out of their lurking angles, dark dungeons and close caves. The book goes on to say that if the fox bolted, he was taken in snares or nets, so that they were apparently not used with hounds.

Colonel Thornton, a well-known Yorkshire Squire in the latter half of the 18th century, paid great attention to his terriers, so Mr. Castle’s book tells us, and it was from his terrier Pitch that most of the white terriers are descended.

When dog shows were first started, anything that had black-and-tan markings and that had a docked tail was shown as a fox-terrier, but the early winners mostly came from the Grove, the Oakley, the Belvoir, and the Quorn hounds. Old Jock, bred in the Rufford kennels in 1859, Old Trap, bred by Mr. Arkwright, Master of the Oakley, and Grove Nettle, 1862, correspond in fox-terrier pedigrees to the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, and the Byerley Turk in racehorses, for it is from them that the modern show fox-terrier is descended. These dogs were smooth.

Writing in 1858, Stonehenge tells us: In the early part of the last century, when hunting the fox was considered of more interest than galloping after him, one or two terriers were added to the pack, and were not merely kept in readiness to bolt him from his earth when driven to ground by the hounds, but regularly drew each covert with them, and throughout the run followed the line as well as they could, being generally in at the death before the break up was over. He goes on to say that the steeple-chasing fields of two or three hundred persons that had become the fashion at the time he wrote his book made it impossible for a terrier to run with hounds, and that they, therefore, were little used except during the cubbing season, when they were very useful.

He stressed the undesirability of the bull cross, saying that the weight of opinion was against it, more particularly if it showed in the mouth.

He said that "the bull cross makes a dog lie too close to his game, and punish him too much if he can reach him, often absolutely preventing his bolting by hanging on to him.

What is really wanted is a dog small enough to enter any drain or earth which will admit a fox, and, consequently, not above 16 lbs. weight, while to give him strength enough for the task he has to perform he should be at least 14 lbs.

In the Sportsman’s Cabinet, written a little over a hundred years ago, we find that packs of hounds were in the habit of taking two terriers out with them, a larger and a smaller one, the latter as an ultimate resort if the earth were too narrow to admit the bigger dog.

The old English white terrier is now extinct. He was much like a black-and-tan, except in colour. Smooth-coated, he weighed from 6-10 lbs., according to Stonehenge, who added that he was a rank coward unless crossed with the bulldog!

Mr. Sydney Castle is against the idea of the bulldog being responsible for the white colour in fox-terriers, a breed which he is very fond of, but Stonehenge was certain of it. Jack Russell only had wire-coated dogs, as he swore that the smooth-coat came from the bull!¹

Turberville (1611) mentions two types of terriers, the short-legged being preferable, since they got down the holes better, but the long-legged ones were better for hunting above ground, and also went down the holes with some fire.

Tuberville’s book was almost a literal translation of Jacques du Fouilloux (without acknowledgment). The main difference was that he substituted the word terrier for basset!

Mr. Ash, in his Dogs: Their History and Development, ¹ quotes Taplin (1803) as describing the prevalent mania for crossing every sort of terrier with the bulldog. He says this increased the size, but that the genuine and lesser breed of terrier was still kept uncontaminated by sportsmen.

He also tells us that no foxhound pack was complete without a brace of well-bred terriers, one larger and stronger than the other.

(N.B.—Only two terriers figure in the establishment.)

Once terriers began to be used regularly with hounds, the colour question became one of importance.

Where doctors differ, who shall decide? Many Masters of hounds have a prejudice against dark-coloured terriers, as they think they are apt to be mistaken for fox or otter. Others say that there is nothing to this, and that a fox-terrier coming out of an earth is just as likely to be the victim of a mistake, for he smells of fox or otter just as much, and may be brown from the earth.

Unfortunately, a certain number of terriers are killed every year when hunting with otterhound packs, and anything which tends to reduce the chances of accident is worth thinking about.²

With foxhounds the case is rather different. A more likely example might be when hounds are trotting home at the huntsman’s heels on a winter evening after a good hunt. Presently a terrier, which has been to ground, overtakes them. Some old hound is dreaming of his hunt, when suddenly the terrier passes under his nose. He looks dirty and small, and smells foxy. The hound makes a grab as he gets a whiff of the enemy, and the damage is done in a moment. Colour may help on occasion, but it won’t always.

Captain Jack Howell, who used to hunt the Pembrokeshire foxhounds, told me that he had lost terriers in this way. If hounds are standing back from an earth waiting for a fox to bolt, they seldom make a mistake, for the first thing a terrier does on coming out is to shake himself, while a fox stands not on the order of his going. People are more likely to mistake the terrier for a fox than hounds are!

Nicholas Cox, whose Gentleman’s Recreation was first published in 1674, tells us many things of interest, but was very prone to copy from older authorities without acknowledgment. For instance, his instructions for entering terriers to fox and his description of badger digging are almost literal translations from Count Jacques du Fouilloux, whose remarks on the sport are reproduced here. Mr. E. D. Cuming, who is responsible for a modern edition of this book (Cresset Press), mentions many instances of this trait, but has apparently missed the French book. Cox wrote: Fox Hunting is very pleasant; for by reason of his strong hot scent he maketh an excellent Cry; And as his scent is hottest at hand, so it dieth soonest. Besides, he never flieth far before the hounds, trusting not on his Legs, Strength, or Champion Ground, but strongest Coverts. When he can no longer stand up before the Hounds, he then taketh Earth, and then must be digged out.

And again later he says:

"Now, to say the truth, there is not much pastime or pleasure in Hunting a Fox underground; for as soon as that subtle Creature perceiveth the Terriers, if they bay hard, and lie near unto them, they will bolt out immediately, unless it be when the bitch hath young cubs, then they will die sooner than stir.

". . . And their earths have commonly but one Hole, and that is straight a long way in before it come at their Couch. Sometimes craftily they possess themselves of a Badger’s old Burrow, which hath variety of Chambers, Holes and Angles.

"When a good terrier doth once bind the fox, he then yearns, and defends himself very noticeably, but not so strenuously as the Badger, nor is his biting half so dangerous.

. . . It is likewise found by experience that if a Terrier be rubbed with Brimstone or with Oil of Cade and then put him into an Earth, where either a Fox or Badger is, they will leave that earth, and come not to it again a good while after.

Fox hunting in those days was chiefly indulged in during January, February, and March, for the fox’s pelt was then at its best.

It was about this time that fox hunting as we know it was first indulged in. Richard Bloome, who edited The Gentleman’s Recreations in 1686, says therein: When forced away, the fox will lead from wood to wood, a ring of four, six, or ten miles, trying all the earths he knows. As Mr. Cuming remarks, this was a great change from the previous custom of holding up and heading the fox when he tried to break. In former days the sole idea was to kill.

In the Encyclopedie Methodique (Dictionnaire de toutes espèces de chasses), published in 1811, we find the following:

"Hunting the fox with hounds is very amusing, for there are no checks, for the fox is very strong smelling, and does not get far ahead of the hounds. When it is desired to hunt him by running him down (i.e. not underground), one should proceed as follows:

"The night before hunting, towards midnight, one goes and stops the entrances to the earths, which must be known to the gamekeepers, and in the morning one goes and draws for the fox with the pack; for he is not ‘detourné’ (i.e. harboured, like a stag). When he is found, his first care is to make for his earth, but finding it stopped, he doubles back in the wood, and after being hunted a bit, makes for the earth again, and being unable to get in, determines to do his best in the wood, and sometimes gives a very good run.

Since the fox has as good a wind as a stag, and can hold out even longer, it is as well to have relays of hounds, or, at any rate, to slip the youngest and strongest hounds at first, and only to let loose the older ones, or those with less stamina, after the hunt has lasted an hour or an hour and a half.

The writer then goes on to describe the ruses which a fox employs to escape hounds, some of which are interesting, some inaccurate (as, for instance, voiding excrement in the faces of the hounds, to make them give over the chase, also described, with additions, in Cox’s Gentleman’s Recreation).

He goes on to say that if the fox does succeed in getting to ground, he should be smoked out, or, failing that, dug out. The pad of the right fore foot was then given as the honour (not the brush or the mask).

No mention is made of the use of terriers. He goes on to say that few people go in for this form of hunting.

A précis is then given of Jacques du Fouilloux’ advice on digging with bassets (again without acknowledgment to the author!).

But whereas the whole of these methods of hunting or taking the fox occupy less than three columns, nearly six are given to trapping and poisons. The usual form of hunting was with bassets and a gun—a sort of hare drive, in fact.

The interesting part of the above is that it mentions the necessity of earth stopping to ensure a hunt, a practice that I have been unable to find in earlier French books, for until that time the fox was regarded entirely as vermin, and to this day has not been accorded the honour of being a beast of venery.

The practice of hunting bag foxes was not uncommon in England a century ago, largely on account of the scarcity of the real article. When a fox was marked to ground, he was not always killed and eaten, but was as often as not dug out and reserved for another day. In Mr. E. J. F. Tozer’s very interesting History of the South Devon Hunt we are told that Sir W. Carew, who was the Master a century ago, used to set box traps to catch the foxes that he did not dig or bolt. The foxes were kept for several days in a large building, with a sufficiency but not a plethora of food. They were then released, and invariably gave good hunts, as they knew the country and their limbs had not been cramped.

Mr. George Templer, a previous Master, kept a number of foxes in readiness. He kept a special pack of 19-inch dwarf foxhounds, in addition to his regular pack. The special pack were known as the Let-’em-alone hounds, for so well disciplined were they that, provided the Master was up, they would wear a fox down, but not touch him. It is recorded that the Master, Mr. Taylor, and Parson Jack Russell, who often hunted with them, prided themselves on tailing and saving the fox, who was rarely touched by the hounds. One dark-coloured fox, known as the Bold Dragoon, was hunted thirty-six times up to the season 1824–25, and was still in active service then! He would never go into his kennel on his return at night until he had been given his half rabbit or portion of flesh.

Mr. Templer used to course rabbits at Stover with three foxes and some terriers. If a terrier led, he always turned the rabbit before catching it, but if a fox led, he simply ran straight up to it and took it before it could turn.

Mr. Templer was even supposed to have hunted hares with a pack of foxes!

Hunting bagmen was discontinued with the South Devon about 1843. Ten years previously the hunting diaries recorded the numbers of foxes killed and of bagmen under separate headings.

¹ Hounds and Hunting through the Ages, by Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. Derrydale Press, New York.

¹ British Sports and Sportsmen. Hunting volume published by the Sportsman, London.

² Half a dozen keen sportsmen generally join together, each bringing their own hounds. They sit round a bonfire on some hilltops, listening to the cry of the hounds hunting in the woods and valleys below.

¹ Lafayette gave him a number of French hounds.

¹ Monograph on the Fox-terrier, by Sydney Castle.

¹ Mating really hard-coated terriers together will often result in one or two almost smooth-coated puppies amongst the resulting litter, and this sometimes comes out in modern pedigree Jack Russells.

¹ A most interesting and very comprehensive work.

² An instance of this with the Dartmoor otterhounds was reported in the Devon and Exeter Gazette, August, 1930.

CHAPTER III

ON THE USE OF TERRIERS WITH FOXHOUNDS

MR. CHARLES MCNEIL, M.F.H., author of that good little book, The Unwritten Laws of Fox Hunting (Vinton & Co.), stresses the value of the hunt terrier, in fact in the hunting volume of British Sports and Sportsmen states that he regards him as an indispensable adjunct to the hunt establishment. Yet of the vast number of sporting scribes few give the hunt terrier a thought. Why is this? Well, it is an acknowledged fact that 90 per cent. of the people who hunt in the Shires—those Elysiums of galloping grass land so aptly described by Mr. Jorrocks as the Cut ’em down and hang ’em up to dry countries—only hunt to ride, and bar getting a thrill from the hound of the horn and the cry of the pack really know nothing of hounds and hunting. They are out to gallop and jump. The remaining ten per cent. are probably keen on hound work as well, but the real hound men who like to see hounds hunting, and understand what they are doing, probably go to some less fashionable pack for their fun. After all a field of five hundred galloping horsemen and horsewomen does not give the individual much chance to watch hounds working, and there is no time for terrier work.

Hunting books, therefore, more especially the modern ones, are nearly always written for the horse lover. Yet it does seem curious to find terriers hardly mentioned in works like the Badminton Library book on hunting, the more so since the Beaufort Hunt had at one time been famous for its black-and-tan terriers.

Mr. Seigfried Sassoon, in his charming book, Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, tells us that his hero, Denis Milden, the young M.F.H., was very fond of digging, and also on one occasion refers to a terrier in a bag. Otherwise terriers are not mentioned. That Mr. Sassoon understands hounds is apparent, for he tells us how carefully Milden entered his bitch pack and the result, but it is as the horseman that he talks nearly all the time.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the plethora of illustrated hunting books deal largely with horsemanship and few show any real understanding of hounds and hound work. An exception is Mr. Isaac Bell’s splendid book, Foxiana, which gives a greater insight into the management of a pack of foxhounds and into the minds of the hounds themselves than any text book that I have ever read, with the exception of Beckford, and it has an added grace in the humorous touch of the author.

Masefield’s immortal poem, Reynard, the Fox, describes the meet as well as the hunt, but no terrier is mentioned.

There is usually a reason for everything. The facts are as follows: In the Shires and Midlands, i.e., Leicestershire, Rutland, Warwickshire, part of Lincolnshire, Notts, etc., the country is well foxed, the land is largely pasture, and the coverts are mostly handy in size. A fox is easily forced away, and if he is lost, all the huntsman has to do in many cases is to hold hounds on towards the nearest spinney. As often as not he hits off the line of his hunted fox again before he reaches it, but if he fails to do so he is almost sure to find another one there, and the vast majority of the field imagine that the hounds have been running all the time.

Terriers in such a country are rarely used after the cubbing season, unless a fox goes to ground in a drain, when the terrier, usually carried in a bag by a second horseman, may be produced and the fox duly bolted. After all, the field have come to ride and not to stand about and shiver while a terrier is at work.

In such countries many of the earths are artificial drains, and since all are known to the Hunt, they are mostly stopped during the season, or at any rate until February or March, when they are left open for fear of hounds killing a vixen.

During the cubbing season terriers are used for cubs that have been run to ground (probably in some rabbit hole) and which must be dug out and killed, if only to blood the young hounds and reduce the number of foxes in the district.

Most people will agree with Sir Richard Sutton, joint Master of the Quorn, who sums up the situation in three words—I hate digging. Nothing can be more tedious than a dig at the end of a good gallop, and in the Shires at least it is never practised.

But it is as a terrier lover that I write this book, and the fact that a dig is tedious and a nuisance at times in no way detracts from the courage and intelligence shown by the average hunt terrier.

With a provincial pack, that is to say, one hunting a more or less rough country, such as is found in Devon, Yorkshire or Sussex, things are different.

To start with, instead of a field of five hundred you may find fifty or a hundred at most, maybe only twenty for a bad meet. The woods are probably big, there is much moorland or gorse, and stopping can only be done spasmodically.

Everything now depends on the country and the ideas of the Master. In some countries the terriers draw and hunt with the hounds. They are rarely of much use the first season, for they are apt to waste their energy in trying to keep up with the pack. They soon learn wisdom, however, and once they get to know the country, they run cunning and cut off corners in a most amazing way. Often when hounds run to ground there is a terrier in and at the fox before the hunt servants are up.

When there are big mounted fields it is usually unsafe for the terriers to run, so that in many countries they go in a motor-car, or with a runner on foot. Everything depends on circumstances, and on the individual Master’s views.

In the provinces the terrier has a twofold job. If while hounds are drawing, a fox is marked in an unstopped earth, the terrier goes in and bolts him. In other words, he provides a fox. If a fox gets to ground at the end of a run, the terrier tries to bolt him or even to draw him. Parson Jack Russell would not have a terrier that would kill a fox, and few Masters of hounds like their terriers to be so hard. No one likes to dig down to a dead fox.

As an instance of the distance that terriers will run with hounds, one may cite a hunt with the Border pack when hounds ran some thirty miles and marked to ground in the dark. As one of the terriers was missing, they sent over to the earth next morning, and there found the missing dog with his fox which he had killed by himself.

Now we come to the third type of country, hunted by the fell or mountain packs in the Lakeland districts and in Wales. Here hunting is carried on partly as a means of keeping down the foxes which take toll of the early lambs, and largely for sheer love of hunting. The huntsman, whips, and field are all on foot, and the terriers follow in couples. No matter whether it be at the beginning of a hunt or the end of one, the terriers only have one aim in view. It is to bolt the fox if they can, and failing that to kill him underground. Consequently they are of a different type to those used by the more fashionable packs.

Hill foxes have to be killed, and if hounds can’t do it, the terriers must. If they didn’t, traps would be set and the foxes would perish as vermin.

There are many intermediate stages and types, and it is hoped that the details of the terriers kept by various Hunts and the opinions of Masters and huntsmen recorded here will be of value.

One mistake that some huntsmen are apt to make is passing on too quickly when hounds run a fox to ground.

In my opinion it not only mitigates hounds’ disappointment at losing their fox if you whoop and holloa when he goes to ground, but it even gives them a feeling that they have beaten their fox after all, since they have driven him in.

American hunts seldom dig, they can’t spare the foxes, but they always make much of the pack when they den their fox, consequently the hounds hunt well without blood, even if they don’t persevere quite so much at a check towards the end of a hunt.

Another point is that if you move on too quickly, hounds soon lose the knack of marking. By all means make a cast ahead to see if the fox has gone on again,¹ but if you can’t give them a worry, at least let them bay and scratch at the earth.

Jorrocks was a tiger for blood. I alius digs was his motto, but Surtees never mentions terriers.

Yet in the ’sixties nearly all the winning fox-terriers came from Hunt kennels!

Scrutator, a West country M.F.H. whose real name was Horlock, wrote some excellent Letters on Hunting, which were published in 1852. He had good terriers, which lived with the hounds and invariably ran with them. They were hard, and if they could not bolt a fox they killed him.

In the chapter on Norwich terriers will be found a description of one of these little dogs drawing a Hunt terrier. Scrutator beats that.

On one occasion two of his terriers got to ground to a fox. The younger dog got in first, and not being able to get to the fox’s mask, got hold of his brush instead. The older dog was such a short way in that the whipper-in seized him by the stern and began drawing him, only to find that as the dog could not get to the fox, he had done the next best thing and got hold of the young dog’s tail instead, hanging on firmly, so that the whip drew all three together, amidst the cheers and laughter of those standing around.

Scrutator mentions that he once had a couple of hounds in a drain for nine days before they were rescued. One of them had apparently started to eat or at least to suck his own foreleg, the flesh of which was split to the bone.

A case of hounds being buried for sixteen days is recorded by Mr. Varndall, Master of the Crowhurst Otterhounds. This must be hard to beat.

A good terrier is a necessity to an earth stopper, and suitably treated he can even be used for stinking out purposes.

The casual visitor may be surprised at times to see apparently oversized terriers in kennel. They are kept because nearly every pack has to keep busy with the badgers from time to time, and a strong dog is of great value for that game.

As to their value with otterhounds, Major Bell Irving’s chapter shows just how useful they can be, but here again it is up to the individual Masters to decide whether they are to run with hounds or are to be led. Generally speaking, they run with the pack. Otterhound countries differ very much, and there is far more terrier work in the north of England than in the south.

Beckford, greatest of all sporting writers, gave some instructions on how to dig. Daniel, in his Rural Sports (1807), did likewise, and also gave it as his opinion that if a terrier was to run with hounds he should be rather oversized.

A hunt was something more than a gallop in earlier days, for in 1773 a certificate was signed by fourteen witnesses that a pack of hounds ran a fox continuously from twenty-seven minutes past nine in the morning until five o’clock in the afternoon with a break of half an hour, when