206 THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DOG. 



In the matter of feeding, variety is necessary. No 

 animal thrives well confined to one sort of food. The 

 Hound is a large and most energetic animal, and must be 

 liberally fed. It is the potential energy of the food which 

 develops into the dynamical energy of speed and endur- 

 ance. It is the protoplasmic substance of food which is 

 converted into muscle and nerve, and the minerals of the 

 ash of the food which are converted into bone, by the marvel- 

 ous workings of the animal economy. The Hound itself, 

 in its perfection, the music of its tongue, and the arrowy 

 swiftness of its pace, are neither less nor more than the 

 varied products of the vital metamorphoses of its food. 

 Give it plenty; it is greedy not without a cause; give it 

 variety, for it has the same disgust for eternal sameness 

 that you and I have. Give scraps from the table bread, 

 meat, bones, vegetables; from the kitchen, hot liquor and 

 the varied offal which accumulates there. Meal, ground 

 of equal parts of rye, oats, and corn, and baked in thick 

 pones, is a good working diet. The dairy will furnish skim- 

 milk, curds, whey, buttermilk, bonny-clabber. When you 

 butcher a beef or kill hogs, unkennel the pack and let them 

 gorge; it delights and does them good. Bear in mind that 

 we are trying to follow nature, rather than a cut-and-dried 

 artificial system. 



This article is written from the stand-point of the coun- 

 try gentleman helping to make helpful suggestions to those 

 who desire to adopt the fox-hunt as the manliest and most 

 invigorating, the most delightful, of the sports of the field, 

 and to help to make it the national sport of America. 

 Therefore, those to whom the hunt is a mere fashionable fad, 

 will probably not find much to amuse and less to instruct 

 them, seeing that they know everything which is "really 

 so English, don't you know," It is hoped that gentle- 

 men of moderate means, lovers of horse and hound, will 

 be encouraged to take up the sport and to maintain a 

 pack, which can be done at a very moderate expense. If a 

 gentleman be so situated that he can breed and train his 

 own hunting-horse, I am sure he will take more pleasure in 



