OF STEADINESS 189 



It is a great pleasure, when a hound challenges, to be 

 certain that he is right : it is a cruel disappointment 

 to hear a rate immediately succeed it, and the smack- 

 ing of whips instead of halloos of encouragement. A 

 few riotous and determined hounds do a deal of mis- 

 chief in a pack. Never, when you can avoid it, put 

 them among the rest ; let them be taken out by them- 

 selves, and well chastised ; and if you find them 

 incorrigible, hang them. The common saying, Evil 

 communications corrtipt good manners, holds good with 

 regard to hounds ; they are easily corrupted. The 

 separating of the riotous ones from those which are 

 steady, answers many good purposes : it not only 

 prevents the latter from getting the blood which they 

 should not, but it also prevents them from being over- 

 awed by the smacking of whips, which is too apt to 

 obstruct drawing and going deep into cover. A 

 couple of hounds, which I received from a neighbour 

 last year, were hurtful to my pack : they had run with 

 a pack of harriers, and, as I soon found, were never 

 afterwards to be broken from hare. It was the begin- 

 ning of the season ; covers were thick, hares in plenty, 

 and we seldom killed less than five or six in a 

 morning. The pack, at last, got so much blood, that 

 they would hunt them as if they were designed to hunt 

 nothing else. I parted with that couple of hounds ; 

 and the others, by proper management, are become as 

 steady as they were before. You will remind me, 

 perhaps, that they were draft-hounds : it is true, they 

 were so ; but they were three or four years hunters ; 

 an age when they might be supposed to have known 



