NOTES BY THE WAY. 159 



considerate, deferential, but insinuating, galla 't. The 

 warble he makes use of on that occasion is the same, 

 BO far as my ear can tell, as the one he pipes when 

 fading his rival. 



FOX AND HOUND. 



I STOOD on a high hill or ridge one autumn day 

 and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far 

 beneath me. What odors that fox must have shaken 

 out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, 

 and how great their specific gravity not to have been 

 blown away like smoke by the breeze ! The fox ran 

 a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few 

 feet of a stone wall ; then turned a right angle and 

 led off for the mountain, across a plowed field and a 

 succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes 

 the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air, 

 and never once did she put it to the ground while in 

 my sight. When she came to the stone wall she took 

 the other side from that taken by the fox, and kept 

 about the same distance from it, being thus separated 

 several yards from his track, with the fence between 

 her and it. At the point where the fox turned 

 .iharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards, 

 then wheeled, and feeling the air a moment with her 

 nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail 

 as unerringly as Fate. It seemed as if the fox must 

 have sowed himself broadcast as he went along, and 



