If it be a large cover, keep within hearing of the hounds and huntsman. This can only be effected by being down wind, and should be done without any reference to the distance round, which it may impose. Of course, it is not intended that a man should take any thing he can avoid out of his horse by galloping round a cover, but let him keep on steadily opposite the hounds, taking heed that he does not get so far forward as to endanger heading back the fox, and so spoiling his own and his neighbours’ sport. This I only recommend where covers are very large, and even then it may not be the best system. In all cases where it is practicable, I never throw a chance away by losing sight of hounds. I remember, some years ago, meeting Sir Richard Puleston at Cresford village, whence we trotted to a wood that skirts the high road to Chester. As we jogged forward, a friend overtook me, accosting me with, “You need not hurry yourself, for they’ll find nothing where they’re going: it has been beaten within an hour by a party of coursers, who have left nothing alive on four legs within it, you may rely.” In ten minutes, the pack and field were streaming, best pace, after a fox found in that same coppice, away for Shavington, over a country like the cream of Leicestershire or Northampton. In fox-hunting, depend solely upon yourself, and keep with the pack. Even in going from cover to cover, be with them. Circumstances frequently arise which induce a huntsman to abandon trying a place upon which he may have previously fixed; and how often has a fox jumped out of a hedge-row in the centre of a pack trotting industriously away to look for a chance probably half a dozen miles off! In windy weather, when hounds are in cover, unless you draw it with them, it is two to one you never get away at all, and ten to one against a good start. I have had some experience of horses in my day, and have ever found, that, of all ways of beating them, the surest is that of trying to catch hounds. Laying aside the excitement and energy produced by the music, alongside of which they go sailing away in wild delight, it must be remembered that the pace of fox-hounds with a scent is equal to the best, if not superior, that any first-class hunter possesses. What sort of a nag then is it, that you can expect to catch them with ten minutes’ law? In calm weather, also, the danger of losing sight of hounds is by no means to be disregarded. There are some days (those which invariably carry the best scent) when hounds will find, and fly away like magic, not one in the pack attempting to throw tongue. Here, if the cover be large, unless you have them in your eye, the odds are you never get away; and see what you lose--the excellence of the scent has stopped the cry: the faster hounds go, the less they say about it.