44 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



human system, consists the skill of the physician, supe- 

 rior to the common run of ordinary practitioners, upon 

 general principles. There is no less in hounds an 

 idiosyncracij, — a peculiarity in their several dispositions, 

 which requires the skill of a professor to cope with. 

 Some young hounds enter instinctively; — from their first 

 to their last appearance in the field they do no wrong; — 

 they commence with the scent to which they were born, 

 and afford a moral to beings of higher class, in their 

 devotion, through their lives, to the purposes of their 

 creation. Others, equally good, will take no notice of 

 anything ; will not stoop to any scent during the first 

 season, and are still slack at entering, even in the 

 second ; but ultimately are distinguished at the head 

 of the pack : and such, I have always observed, last 

 some seasons longer than the more precocious of the 

 same litter. Others have an almost inveterate propen- 

 sity to run anything and everything, by scent or by 

 view, and act altogether upon the voluntary principle as 

 soon as they are emancipated from their couplings. A 

 love of hare will descend, in particular blood, through 

 generations, and will occasionally demonstrate itself, 

 especially on bad scenting days, when a hound that is 

 at any time unsteady must, and will run soinethincj; but 

 the same hound, when settled to a fox, may be invincible. 

 In contending with these and many other difficulties 

 of Nature, it is absurd to imagine that one universal 

 system of discipline would be found to answer, any better 

 than it would for school-boys. It has been said of men : 



