VI PREFACE, 



not one huntsman or dog-breaker in a thousand fit to 

 carry 'a whip, and not one whipper-in in a million 

 who can discriminate when to hit hard, or when to be 

 content with rating, and, though last not least, when 

 to hold his tongue. My maxim is, rather to let a 

 hundred faults pass without a blow, than strike a 

 constitutionally timid animal, or one that is not con- 

 scious of his fault. You may, if not governed by a 

 nice discrimination, whip a dozen faults in, when you 

 flog one out. No hound, no dog, should ever be 

 coupled up to a gate-post and thrashed, as I have 

 seen done ; the ceremony of coaxing him first to be 

 caught, and then the coupling of him up, removes all 

 recollection from the animal's mind of what he had 

 been doing, and renders punishment vain. When 

 doing wrong, let the hound be got up to, red-handed 

 in the fact, and, at the right moment, hit hard ; then, 

 when he flies the scene of his errors and reaches his 

 huntsman, by the side of the huntsman's horse he 

 should find an Alsatia for every sin, and by liis 

 huntsman be coaxed for coming there. 



I once saw *' Beer," who hunted the Oakley hounds, 

 taking to the pack after Mr. Dauncey had resigned it, 

 kill a cub at Chellington. The hounds he had suc- 

 ceeded to were undoubtedly slack, their spirits never 

 having been roused over a dead fox, a triumph, by 

 the by, they seldom got, and therefore the more need 

 to rejoice when such an unwonted event happened. 

 The day was close and sultry, and the hounds long- 

 ing, when they had killed their fox, for shade and 

 water. When the fox was rather carelessly padded 

 and brushed. Beer lifted the fox over his head, and 

 hallooed to the pack to come and break him up. 

 One or two moved idly forward, but the rest still lay 



