20' THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



luck to succeed, iu the first draft from a distant kenneL 

 which I pitched upon as hkely to recruit the pack, and 

 as particularly qualified for the country I had undertaken 

 to hunt. My predecessor, probably at no less pains and 

 expense, had procured drafts from Cheshire and else- 

 where, which, altogether as unluckily, proved otherwise 

 than beneficial to the kennel. The elite of the pack, 

 and many there were, bitches especially, well worth 

 preserving as a foundation to the present, were chiefly 

 bred at home, reflecting no httle credit upon the judg- 

 ment of their owner ; but the majority of the dogs, though 

 magnificent to the eye, were, to use poor Bob Oldaker's 

 own words, fit only to be cut up into gloves. 



Much did their size and action militate against their 

 progress over a country where a hound should be a 

 close hunter. To enable a hound to be a close hunter, 

 he must be near his work ; a large lollopi?ig animal will, 

 in our country, not only be figuratively as well as literally 

 above his business, but he will tire with the effort of 

 bearing his own weight over flints and fallows requiring 

 constant stooping, and a gift of pressing, without which 

 a Hertfordshire fox will laugh him to scorn. I must 

 not be supposed, in any strictures upon a draft from the 

 Cheshire, to offer any disparagement to that pack, 

 which is, I believe, what it should be : I mean only to 

 say, that their drafts did not suit the purpose of improv- 

 ing ours. For our country, I hold twenty-three inches 



