BLOOD THAT IS DEARLY EARNED 135 



you cannot keep him in (if he be determined to come out), prevent him, if 

 you can, from being so inclined. All kind of mobbing is allowable, when 

 hounds are out of blood ; * and you may keep the fox in cover, or let him 

 out, as you think the hounds will manage him best. 



Though I am so great an advocate for blood, as to judge it necessary 

 to a pack of fox-hounds, yet I by no means approve of it, so far as it is 

 sometimes carried. I have known three young foxes chopped in a furze- 

 brake in one day, without any sport ; a wanton destruction of foxes, scarcely 

 answering the purpose of blood ; since that blood does hounds most good 

 which is most dearly earned. Such sportsmen richly deserve blank days ; 

 and, without doubt, they often meet with them. Mobbing a fox, indeed, 

 is only allowable when hounds are not likely to be a match for him without 

 it. One would almost be inclined to think blood as necessary to the men 

 as to the hounds, since the best chase is flat, unless you kill the fox. When 

 you ask a fox-hunter, What sport he has had ? and he replies, It was good ; 

 I think the next question generally is, Did your hounds kill ? If he should 

 say, They did not, the conversation ends ; but if, on the contrary, he tell 

 you that they did, you then ask a hundred questions, and seldom are satisfied 

 till he has related every particular of the chase. 



When there is snow on the ground, foxes will lie at earth. 2 Should 

 your hounds be in want of blood, it will at that time be easy to dig one to 

 turn out before them, when the weather breaks ; but I seem to have for- 

 gotten a new doctrine which I lately heard, that blood is not necessary to 

 a pack of fox-hounds. If you also should have taken up that opinion, I 

 have only to wish, that the goodness of your hounds may prevent you from 

 changing it, or from knowing how far it may be erroneous. 3 



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 provoked me often, and has made even a parson swear : it was but 

 the other day that we experienced an extraordinary 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 



L Yet, how many foxes owe their lives to the too great eagerness of their pursuers ? 



2 Earths should be watched when there is snow upon the ground ; for foxes then will lie 

 at earth. Those who are inclined to destroy them, can track them in, and may dig them out. 



3 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. 



