32 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



might have strayed ; nay, I remember, upon one occasion, 

 to have seen some well-meaning and kindly officious of 

 the field actually riding at her, with that cracking of 

 whips, and ratings of, " Go along home" with which a 

 stray guardian of the sheepfold is usually saluted. She 

 had certainly nearly as much resemblance to a retriever 

 as to any of her associates. Now this Wisdom was the 

 enfant cherie of the season — the result of an experiment 

 which was to eclipse the blood of " old Meynell," and to 

 throw such a gleam of intelligence upon the science of 

 breeding as should cast into deep shade the errors of all 

 former ages: she was to be the shining evidence and 

 manifestation of a new light. 



I am not making this relation sarcastically or imper- 

 tinently, as a piece of irrelevant gossip, but as matter 

 highly pertinent to a chapter upon hounds ; which, 

 I think, all will allow, when I say that this experiment 

 was made by the Professor of whom I have before 

 spoken as a master of hounds — Mr. Smith, late master 

 of the Craven. It consisted in the cross of a blood- 

 hound with a foxhound bitch. It was nothing extra- 

 ordinary to imagine, that if the nose of a foxhound 

 were capable of improvement, it would be by no means 

 so well effected as by a cross with the bloodhound— 

 generally allowed to possess the faculty or sense of smell 

 in a degi'ee of pre-eminence beyond its species ; and, to 

 the best of my belief, this notion received not only the 



