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COURSING THE HARE

a covert within reasonable reach. Since Lord Orford's time breeding has been the careful study of many good coursers, and the keynote to the modern greyhound was supplied by King Cob, bred in 1839 by Captain Daintree, whose name figures times without number in the pedigrees of all the celebrities of recent years. I expect it would be almost impossible to find a good modern greyhound who has not some strain of King Cob in his veins; and in certain cases, if the pedigree were extended out to eleven generations or so, it would be found that the name of the Norfolk celebrity appeared over fifty times. Whether King Cob and his contemporaries were as fast as their descendants of to-day is open to doubt; but that they were equally handsome and as much at home behind a hare is pretty well certain, not only from the old pictures and prints in existence, but from the fact that at one time even greater law was allowed in the slip than has lately been the fashion.

The Ashdown Park Club, in Berkshire, founded in the year 1780 by the then Lord Craven, was the first rival which Swaffham had, though, as this was long before the railway era, it is quite certain that it drew upon an entirely different set of kennels. The Swaffham ground is mostly enclosed arable, with a little grass, and very level; but at Ashdown the coursing