"HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" 9 



treatment and such scanty notice from the field that 

 one is almost disposed to believe that many people 

 who hunt hold them in as small estimation as did 

 the victim of Mr. Pigg's satirical explosion. 



Still, it is through ignorance they err — sheer un- 

 adulterated ignorance ; they have never been taught, 

 they know no better. How should they? Many 

 youths, who by the time they come to man's estate 

 have learned how to ride and sit a horse over a 

 fence, who have perhaps played a game of polo or 

 joined a regiment, come out to hunt, and before 

 their first season is over they imagine they know all 

 about fox-hunting, and are satisfied they have become 

 fox-hunters and sportsmen. I wonder how many of 

 them know anything about the value of a hound ? I 

 do not mean his intrinsic monetary value, but the value 

 of a good working hound in the hunting season to 

 the master of the pack. Indeed, how few that come 

 out hunting ever think how much care, thought, and 

 expense has been bestowed upon every single one of 

 those forty or so of well-bred foxhounds that we see 

 jogging on to covert round their huntsman's horse? 

 The care and thought began before they appeared as 

 puppies into the world in which they receive such 

 small consideration from many of those for whom 

 they are to provide such glorious pastime. The pedi- 

 grees of their parents have been carefully studied 

 before they were mated, their working powers and 

 peculiarities considered, as well as the structui-e of 

 their frames. It has been, perhaps, no easy matter 

 to procure some of the sires from whose goodly loins 

 they have sprung, nor has it been an inexpensive 



