308 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



known a scent Avliicli had been bad all day mend 

 in the afternoon, to tlie fullest perfection ; but take 

 it all in all, there is no rule to he laid doioi as a 

 governing principle presiding over the chance of 

 sport. The fact of the ground where it ^' carries " 

 militating, as it always does, against a good 

 scent w^ould seem very evidently to suggest that 

 the scent that leads on the hound arises from the 

 foot of the creature before him, and not from 

 the breath, or from any exudation of the animal 

 structure. But there have come within my expe- 

 rience facts as to there being a scent from a dead 

 deer carried on men's shoulders, as narrated in 

 another place, whose feet had never touched the 

 ground since her death, and who had no breath 

 in her body, which would go far to prove that 

 the foot of a creature, and the breath, were not 

 the sole facts that led the hound along. 



Scent and its fathomless intricacies, its varia- 

 tions and its presence or otherwise, its strength, 

 its weakness, or its non-existence, arise, say what 

 we will, from some strange phenomena of wliich 

 we really know very little. 



I liave often put my face into tlie ^'form" of 

 a hare that moment disturbed, to try if I could 



