OF STEADINESS 193 



If you know any pack that is very unsteady, 

 depend upon it, either no care has been taken in 

 entering the young hounds, to make them steady, or 

 else the men afterwards, by hallooing them on im- 

 properly, and to a wrong scent, have forced them to 

 become so. 



The first day of the season, I advise you to take 

 out your pack where you have least riot, and where 

 you are most sure to find ; for, notwithstanding their 

 steadiness at the end of the last season, long rest may 

 have made them otherwise. If you have any hounds 

 more vicious than the rest, they should be left at home 

 a day or two, till the others are well in blood. Your 

 people, without doubt, will be particularly cautious, at 

 the beginning of the season, what hounds they halloo 

 to : should they be encouraged on a wrong scent, it 

 will be a great hurt to them. 



The first day that you hunt in the forest, be equally 

 cautious what hounds you take out. All should be 

 steady from deer : you may afterwards put others to 

 them, a few at a time. I have seen a pack draw 

 steadily enough, and yet, when running hard, fall on a 

 weak deer, and rest as contented as if they had killed 

 their fox. These hounds were not chastised, though 

 caught in the fact, but were suffered to draw on 



obedient, unless they be made to understand what is required of them : 

 when that is effected, many hounds will not need chastisement, if you do 

 not suffer them to be corrupted by bad example. Few packs are more 

 obedient than my own, yet none, I believe, are chastised less ; for, as 

 those hounds that are guilty of an offence are never pardoned '; so those 

 that are innocent, being by this means less liable to be corrupted, are 

 never punished. 



O 



