DISEASES TO WHICH HOUNDS ARE LIABLE. 173 



fur my favourite old foxhound^ ^' Ilarrowgatc," and 

 wrote to my brother at Berkeley Castle for any old 

 steady liomids, I cared not liow slow from age or 

 accident, that he could spare me. All I required was 

 steadiness from deer and hares, and in them a re- 

 solution to speak to nothing but a fox, a badger, 

 a martin- cat, or otter. I name them all separately, 

 for I cannot bring myself to desecrate a fox by the 

 vulgarly used expression of a ^^ vermin." His 

 answer to my ajiplication was, that he had several 

 of his best hounds incapacitated from '^ running up" 

 by the ^^ kennel lameness," on w^hosc truth I might 

 rely if their telling it at a foot's pace would be of 

 any use to me. I closed with this proposal, and 

 three couple were sent down to me. Dear old 

 Harrowgate, therefore, found himself, in his old age, 

 with the huntsman who '' entered" him, and at the 

 head of a little pack of hounds, and the splendid 

 old specimen of an English , foxhound was himself 

 once more. Harrowgate, as I have described in my 

 former work of ^^The Eeminiscences of a Hunts- 

 man," found for me in the New Forest my first 

 otter : the other hounds entered well, and on that 

 day I killed a brace of otters. On tliis beginning, 

 I continued to draw for otters, often imaginary, but 



