DIFFICULTY OF DEALING WITH PANICS. S'll 



panic, or a superficial desire to find a mare's-nest, 

 that was forced upon the poor, dear foxhounds 

 in the Durham kennels — how mischievous and 

 melancholy the effects of timorous and ignorant 

 delusions are. 



No sooner was it bruited about tliat a kennel 

 of noble hounds had gone mad, and that, to 

 prevent contagion to men, numbers of hounds 

 were instantaneously destroyed, than a mental 

 contagion broke out in the brains of the tem- 

 porary rulers of other kennels, as well as in tlie 

 heads of some other veterinary men, cats, and 

 old women. Every sort of illness or distemper 

 among the canine, feline, and human race w^as 

 set down as the long-known and really very rare, 

 but always fatal, disease of hydrophobia. The 

 delusive term of ^^ rabies" is made to cover 

 any kind of delusion. When the wildest rumours 

 gained, or had been purposely made to gain, 

 insertion in a large portion of tlio press, in tlie 

 month of April, it was urged, witliout the usual 

 respect shown to that remarkable month, so famed 

 for folly, that not only liad men and women died 

 ^'from hydrophobia," but that in i\\o Bel voir 

 kennels fifty of His Grace of Rutland's well-known 



