ENTERING THEM AT FOX AND HARE 89 



are not, will stop at a word ; because they will 

 understand you ; and, after they have been treated 

 in this manner, a smack only of the whip will spare 

 you the inhumanity of cutting your hounds in pieces 

 (not very justly), for faults which you yourself have 

 encouraged them to commit. 



In your last letter you seem very anxious to get 

 your young hounds well blooded to fox, at the same 

 time that you talk of entering them at hare. How 

 am I to reconcile such contradictions? If the blood 

 of fox be of so much use, surely you cannot think the 

 blood of hare a matter of indifference, unless you 

 should be of opinion that a fox is better eating. You 

 may think, perhaps, it was not intended they should 

 hunt sheep ; yet we very well know, that when once 

 they have killed sheep, they have no dislike to 

 mutton afterwards. 



You have conceived an idea, perhaps, that a fox- 

 hound is designed by Nature to hunt a fox : yet, 

 surely, if that were your opinion, you would not think 

 of entering him at any other game. I cannot, how- 

 ever, suppose Nature designed the dog which we call 

 a fox-hound to hunt a fox only, since we very well 

 know that he will also hunt other animals. That a 

 well-bred fox-hound may give a preference to vermin, 

 ccsteris paribus, I will not dispute : it is very possible 

 he may ; but of this I am certain, that every fox- 

 hound will leave a bad scent of fox for a good one of 

 either hare or deer, unless he has been made steady 

 from them ; and in this I shall not fear to be 

 contradicted. But, as I do not wish to enter into 



