Page:The Hare.djvu/156

128 booklet of his own poems, which had been published by subscription amongst his neighbours.

A small covering of snow, two or three inches or less, or an overnight frost which has hardly disappeared, are both greatly in favour of the hare, whose rough pads are much better adapted to a slippery surface than the smooth feet of a greyhound; and this reminds me that on two consecutive Saturdays in January 1883 I saw seven-and-twenty courses run without a single hare being killed. This happened at Broomshields, an old manorial estate which lies at a high altitude in the extreme west of the county of Durham, and is mostly in rough pasture, of much the same description as that we used to course over at the High Law. Coursing readers will remember that 1883 was about the zenith of the enclosed coursing meetings, and at that time there were monthly fixtures at Gosforth Park, where stakes of all sorts and sizes were run, and every class of greyhounds catered for. Well, Broomshields is quite in the wilds, and at least thirty-five miles from Gosforth Park; but so strong was the coursing spirit in the county of Durham just then that there were little meetings on every estate (which acted as trials for Gosforth), and greyhounds kept in every village. Many of these were the property of innkeepers, small tradesmen, and even miners (a