WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 223 



a strategic manoeuvre in which he is too often successful on such 

 occasions, from the frequency of deep valleys, roadless forests, 

 and impracticable fences, which are like Devonshire banks, but 

 far bigger ; the most determined horseman soon finds himself 

 nowhere, the piqueurs are left miles behind, and the hounds 

 eventually throw up in a strange country without the power, if 

 they have the instinct, to return to their own kennel. If, there- 

 fore, the plan of branding hounds with the initial letter of the 

 owner's surname be found so useful in England, a fortiori would 

 it be so in Lower Brittany. 



Some five-and-twenty years ago I was riding to cover in 

 company with Mr. J. Russell and sixteen couple of the N.D.H., 

 when looking over a young hound, recently sent to him from a 

 distant kennel, he discovered him to be unbranded. " This 

 won't do," said he ; " we hunt to-day in a wild, woodland 

 country, and if we lose that hound, we shall never see him 

 again." Then instantly dismounting and handing his horse's 

 rein to me, he drew a small scissors from his pocket-book, took 

 the hound between his knees, and in a twinkling cut out a great 

 R in the hair on the animal's ribs. " There, Frank, no matter 

 where he turns up now ; he'll be sent back to my kennel for 

 fifty miles round." So spake Russell, of all living houndsmen 

 certainly one of the most experienced and most practical. 



During our absence at Gourin, an Englishman had arrived 

 at Carhaix and taken up his quarters at an old-fashioned house, 

 exactly opposite the Hotel La Tour d'Auvergne ; and, as our 

 garrulous and good-natured host, Marseillier, made a point of 

 ferreting out the business of every stranger who sojourned for a 

 night or two at his own or a neighbour's house, he was not long 

 in informing us that the gentleman was called "Johnson," that his 

 object was the chasse, and that, with M. de St. Prix's permission, 

 he hoped to be allowed to join the wolf-hounds while they hunted 

 in that part of the country. Now, ubiquitous as Englishmen are 



