THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 25 



some letters upon his " system/' published not very long 

 since in the " New Sporting Magazine/' under the signa- 

 ture, if I rightly remember, of '' Skim/' or something of 

 that kind (but of this I am not positive, not having them 

 to refer to). I read them on the supposition that they 

 were published on authority, and can call to mind enough 

 to know, that, if I attempted to give any description of 

 my own ideas upon the same points, I should find my- 

 self insensibly betrayed into the use of the same lan- 

 guage. I shall think that I have reason to be satisfied 

 with any effort of my own pen, should it produce any- 

 thing half so well worth reading, or manifesting a similar 

 knowledge of the subject. 



During the three years in which I was occupied in 

 getting together twenty couples of dwarf foxhound har- 

 riers, with which I hunted hare in my own neighbour- 

 hood, — in the course of which I obtained drafts not only 

 from every pack which might be said to be within reach, 

 but also from Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Hampshire, &c., I 

 found none which could, in the aggregate, at all compare 

 with those which I got from the kennel of Mr. Berkley, 

 then at Harold, in Bedfordshire. 



It would be out of place, here, to state my reasons 

 for hunting hare with the kind of hound by which she 

 is generally supposed to be more than over-matched, 

 further than that they were founded upon my own pre- 

 ference for that, over every other dog in the creation, 



E 



