A huntsman's example to his hounds. 169 



hedge, and waving the hounds back with a whip, 

 but never hitting one hard, I cheered them all the 

 time my man was cutting oiF the brush and pads, 

 and scalping the fox ; this kept up the animal anxiety 

 to have him. I then took the fox by the neck and 

 shook him, while I cheered them, in their faces ; and 

 when they were all gathered round me, and raging 

 to get hold of him, I tossed the fox among them. 

 This plan I followed from having observed, in my 

 younger days, that Colonel Berkeley always did it ; 

 and from observation of the good effect it had. 

 I defy a man to have set his foot on a fox, with 

 my hounds, in the middle of a field, without their 

 snatching him away, unless he had double-thonged 

 them all into an abstinence through terror ; and I 

 am convinced that there are two ways of giving 

 a fox to hounds, the one, slack and improper, and 

 the other, most useful. As I have always said, 

 there is nothing that takes example so much as a 

 hound does from his huntsman, or adopts so com- 

 pletely the method of the man who rules. While I 

 knew Jack Stephens, I never saw anything fast in 

 him but his whip and spurs, his haste often occa- 

 sioning delay ; his hounds never grew fond of him, 

 and he had no " dog language." When I saw him 

 with Mr. Osbaldeston (the latter, I think, was often 

 on a pony), it was all hurry, horn and holloa, quick 

 finds in gorses, short bursts, no perseverance ; but 

 on being thwarted or checked, the words were, " give 

 it up and find another with a better scent." The 

 hounds, therefore, so far as I saw their actions, par- 

 took of their huntsman, and they were all for a race; 

 and then " heads up " was the word for the horn or 

 holloa. In saying this I don't disparage the hounds. 



