PACE 



which has travelled far beyond his own beat on a 

 love-making trip. 



The amount of pressure that hounds can bring 

 to bear on their fox depends of course on the pace, 

 and pace depends on the strength of the scent, for 

 hounds cannot travel faster than their noses. 



It was Goosey, the famous Belvoir huntsman, 

 who begged leave to state that the fox was a 

 toddling animal. By this he meant that a fox 

 will keep putting a longer and longer interval 

 between himself and the hounds, unless the latter 

 are able to keep up a sufficient pressure. On a 

 good scenting day, when hounds get away right 

 on the back of their fox, the latter has to run 

 his hardest; and, roughly speaking, the average 

 fox cannot keep this up for more than twenty 

 minutes or half an hour. At other times, when 

 scent is moderate or catchy, hounds push on when 

 they can, and are working and taking so much 

 out of themselves all the time. Not so with the 

 fox however. He moderates his pace, and may 

 even stop or lie down, and by so doing gets his 

 second wind if he requires it, and what to him is 

 most important of all, he gains time. It is ever 

 the fox's aim to do this, for the slower he can go 

 the less heated he gets, and eventually he is able 

 to run hounds out of scent altogether. 



The fox is extremely fast for a moderate dis- 

 tance, especially in rough ground where he can 

 easily beat hounds. He is remarkably active 

 too amongst crags and cliffs in mountainous 

 country. On a good scenting day in the fell 

 country, the pace is likely to be very fast indeed. 

 The pace of the modern foxhound of the type one 

 sees at Peterborough is second to none in the 

 estimation of some people, but I am willing to 

 wager a trifle that if field-trials for hounds were 



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