20 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



pains and expense, had procured drafts from Cheshire 

 and elsewhere, which, altogether as unluckily, proved 

 otherwise than beneficial to the kennel. The cUte 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 little credit upon 

 the judgment 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 lolhping animal will, 

 in our country, not only be figuratively as well as lite- 

 rally above his business, but he will tire with the eflbrt 

 of bearing his own weight over flints and fallows re- 

 quiring constant stooping, and a gift oipy^essing, 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 improving ours. For our country, I hold twenty- 

 three inches as the maximum of height. It is true 

 that, for the strong black-thorn woods of Bedfordshire 

 and Cambridgeshire, a certain weight of substance is 

 necessary, and with all my admitted partiality for small 

 hounds, there is no greater advocate for bone and 



