THE NOBLE SCIENCE. IGl 



the sport, a desire to know what hounds are ahoiit, to 

 learn, as there is, or should be, a reason for doing 

 everything, the reason why everything is done. 



A quick find is essential to the spirit of the day, and, 

 although it will not add to the steadiness of hounds to 

 clap them at once upon a fox, without giving tliem the 

 trouble of drawing for him, it is very desirable to find 

 early, before hounds get so disgusted with drawing 

 through a line of coverts, without a touch of the right 

 scent, that loss of patience inclines them to the ^vl'ong, 

 and they get into a humour to run anything. In Herts, 

 and other countries where game preserves are neither 

 few nor far between, and where there are often more 

 hares than hounds in a spinney, the wonder is, not that 

 any hounds should occasionally riot, but that any code 

 of discipline should have so thoroughly counteracted 

 their natural propensities, as to render them so generally 

 indifferent to the sight, or scent, of anything but that of 

 fox to which they were entered. This, under the old 

 system, was still more surprising, as it was the common 

 custom, even in the best schools, to enter young hounds, 

 in the first instance, to the scent of hare, with the idea 

 of teaching them to stoop to a scent, no matter what. 

 Upon the same principle would gamekeepers encourage 

 young pointers to stand at lark. The correction which 

 must follow, in order to eradicate the seeds which we 

 have ourselves taken pains to implant, appears, to say 



