DIFFERENT SCENTING COUNTRIES 249 



foxes my hounds have killed ? I feel myself inclined 

 to say, the hounds are good ; an answer which, in my 

 opinion, goes more immediately to the spirit of the 

 question than any other that I could give ; since the 

 number of foxes' heads is, at best, but a presumptive 

 proof of the goodness of the hounds. In a country 

 neighbouring to mine, foxes are difficult to be killed, 

 and not easy to be found ; and the gentlemen who 

 hunt that country, are very well contented when 

 they kill a dozen brace of foxes in a season. My 

 hounds kill double that number : ought it to be 

 inferred from thence that they are twice as good ? 



All countries are not equally favourable to hounds. 

 I hunt in three, all as different as it is possible to be ; 

 and the same hounds that behave well in one, some- 

 times appear to behave indifferently in another. Were 

 the most famous pack, therefore, to change their good 

 country for the bad one I here allude to (though, with- 

 out doubt, they would behave well), they certainly 

 would meet with less success than they are at present 

 used to: our cold flinty hills would soon convince them, 

 that the difference of strength between one fox and 

 another — the difference of goodness betwixt one hound 

 and another — are yet but trifles, when compared with 

 the more material difference of a good-scenting country 

 and a bad one. 1 



1 Great inequality of scent is very unfavourable to hounds. In heathy 

 countries the scent always lies ; yet I have remarked, that the many 

 roads which cross them, and the many inclosures of poor land that sur- 

 round them, render hunting in such countries, at times, very difficult to 

 hounds. The sudden change from a good scent to a bad one, puzzles 

 their noses, and confuses their understandings ; and many of them, 



