244 THOUGHTS ON HUNTING 



prevent you from changing it, or from knowing how 

 far it may be erroneous. 1 



Before you have been long a fox-hunter, I expect 

 to hear you talk of the ill-luck which so frequently 

 attends this diversion. I can assure you, it has pro- 

 voked me often, and has made even a parson swear : — 

 it was but the other day that we experienced an ex- 

 traordinary instance of it : we found at the same instant 

 a brace of foxes in the same cover ; and they both 

 broke at the opposite ends of it. The hounds soon 

 got together, and went off very well with one of them ; 

 yet notwithstanding this, such was our ill-luck, that, 

 though the hunted fox took a circle of several miles, 

 he at last crossed the line of the other fox ; the heel 

 of which we hunted back to the cover from whence we 

 came : it is true, we perceived that our scent worsted, 

 and were going to stop the hounds ; but the going off 

 of a white frost deceived us also in that. 



Many a fox have I known lost by running into 

 houses and stables. It is not long since my hounds 

 lost one, when hunting in the New Forest : — after 

 having tried the country round, they had given him 

 up, and were gotten home; when in rode a farmer, 

 full gallop, with news of the fox : he had found him, 

 he said, in his stable, and had shut him in. The 

 hounds returned : the fox, however, stood but a little 

 while, as he was quite run up before. 



Some years ago, my hounds running a fox across 



1 Those who can suppose the killing of a fox to be of no service to a 

 pack of fox-hounds, may suppose, perhaps, that it does them hurt : it is 

 going but one step further. 



