THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 163 



have been a curious sight to have seen Mr. Smith's 

 twenty-five couples, " fifty in a row," tied to park pahngs 

 (lashings must have been at a premium), to be flogged 

 "till all hands were tired." Dr. Kate's feat of birching 

 some fifty pairs of rebellious Etonians, one fine morning, 

 was a joke to this ; they had it one by one. Pity that 

 there is no omni-flagellatory steam-engine. It might be 

 worth erecting such an apparatus, " for six weeks' " prac- 

 tice, " from day-break till the afternoon."* On bad scent- 

 ing days, when there is confusion of scent on gi'ound 

 stained with varieties of game, the best hounds may flash 

 a Httle at hare ; but we are supposing nothing adverse — 

 we are drawing upon a good hunting day ; not a pretty 

 patch of gorse, though we have several ; but, as they are 

 not the most common of our coverts, say Westbury, or 

 any other moderate sized wood which may suggest itself 

 to your fancy. See that old bitch how she feathers — how 

 her stern vibrates with the quickened action of her 

 pulses ; for a moment she ploughs the earth with her 

 nostrils, she whimpers out a half- suppressed emotion, 

 dashes a few yards forward, stoops again, and traverses 

 around her. " Yoi, wind him ! have at him, old darling! 

 Yoi, touch on him ! Hey, wind him, old Governess ! Yoi, 

 push him up!" A fox for a million. Onward she strikes, 

 throws back her graceful neck, rears high her head, and, 

 with a note of confidence, proclaims the joyful tidings of 



* Vide Diary of a Huntsman, page 41. 



