en
drawn, a mare started alone, that by running the ground she might
ensure the wager, when having run about one mile in the four, she was
accompanied by a greyhound bitch, which joined her from the side of
the course, and emulatively entering into the competition, continued
to race with the mare for the other three miles, keeping nearly head
and head, and affording an excellent treat to the field by the
energetic exertions of each. At passing the distance-post, five to
four was betted in favour of the greyhound; when parallel with the
stand, it was even betting, and any person might have taken his choice
from five to ten: the mare, however, had the advantage by a head at
the termination of the course.

The courage and spirit of these dogs is very great. A greyhound ran a
hare single-handed and raced her so hard, that, not having time to run
through an opening at the bottom of some paling, she and the greyhound
made a spring at the same moment at the top of the pales. The dog
seized her at the instant she reached it, and in the momentary
struggle he slipt between two broken pales, each of which ran into the
top of his thighs. In this situation he hung till the horsemen came
up, when, to their great surprise, he had the hare fast in his mouth,
which was taken from him before he could be released.

I saw a hare coursed on the Brighton Downs some years ago by two
celebrated greyhounds. Such was the length of the course, some of it
up very steep hills, that the hare fell dead before the dogs, who were
so exhausted that they only reached to within six feet of her. This
was one of the severest courses ever witnessed.

On another occasion, two dogs ran a hare for several miles, and with
such speed as to be very soon out of sight of the coursing party.
After a considerable search, both the dogs and the hare were found
dead within a few yards of each other; nor did it appear that the
former had touched the hare. Mr. Daniel, in his "Rural Sports," states
that a brace of greyhounds, in Lincolnshire, ran a hare from her seat
to where she was killed, a distance, measuring straight, of upwards of
four miles, in twelve minutes. During the course there was a good
number of turns, which must have very considerably increased the space
gone over. The hare ran till she died before the greyhounds touched
her.

In the year 1798, a brace of greyhounds, the property of Mr. Courtall
of Carlisle, coursed a hare from the Swift, near that cit