LETTER XXII 



ARE not your expectations somewhat too sanguine, when you think 

 that you shall have no occasion for bag-foxes to keep your hounds 

 in blood the first season ? It may be as well, perhaps, not to turn them all 

 out, till you can be more certain that your young pack will keep good and 

 steady without them. When blood is much wanted, and they are tired 

 with a hard day, one of these foxes will put them into spirits, and give them 

 as it were, new strength and vigour. 



You desire to know, what I call being out of blood ? In answer to which, 

 I must teU you, that, in my judgment, no fox-hound can fail of killing more 

 than three or four times following, without being visibly the worse for it. 

 When hounds are out of blood, there is a kind of evil genius attending all 

 that they do ; and, though they may seem to hunt as well as ever, they do 

 not get forward ; while a pack of fox-hounds well in blood, like troops 

 flushed with conquest, are not easily withstood. What we call ill luck, 

 day after day, when hounds kill no foxes, may frequently, I think, be traced 

 to another cause, namely, their being out of blood ; nor can there be any 

 other reason assigned why hounds, which we know to be good, should 

 remain so long as they sometimes do without killing a fox. 1 Large packs 

 are least subject to this inconvenience : hounds that are quite fresh, and 

 in high spirits, least feel the want of blood : the smallest packs, therefore, 

 should be able to leave at least ten or twelve couple of hounds behind them, 

 to be fresh against the next hunting day. If your hounds be much out of 

 blood, give them rest : take this opportunity to hunt with other hounds ; 

 to see how they are managed ; to observe what stallion hounds they have ; 

 and to judge yourself, whether they be such as it is fit for you to breed from. 

 If what I have now recommended should not succeed ; if a little rest, and 

 a fine morning, do not put your hounds into blood again, I know of nothing 

 else that will ; and you must attribute your ill success, I fear, to another 

 cause. 



You say, that you generally hunt at a late hour : after a tolerably 

 good run, do not try to find another fox. Should you be long in finding, 

 and should you not have success afterwards, it will hurt your hounds : 

 should you try a long time, and not find, that also will make them slack. 



1 A pack of hounds that had been a month without killing a fox, at last ran one to ground, 

 which they dug, and killed upon the earth : the next seven days that they hunted, they killed 

 a fox each day. 



