336 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



from the grey horse. The soup from the grey horse, however nearly 

 white he may be, is of a darker colour than any of the others. 



I would train my greyhounds on oatmeal, but for this reason, in 

 travelling you can't take your iron boiler with you ; and to change the 

 food of a running dog is to throw him out of condition. Therefore, and 

 therefore only, I feed my greyhounds on biscuit, which is portable, and 

 can be procured in most places. 



One word on passing events, and on a measure dropped this session in 

 the Houses of Parliament as to " dogs in harness." When in Parliament, 

 I successfully resisted the attempt to take from ten thousand families the 

 means of earning their livelihood, and prevented the destruction of twenty 

 thousand dogs, more or less, which would inevitably have been doomed to 

 death had that false-hearted measure succeeded. The enmity to the 

 dog-barrow arises for the most part in ignorance or in sundry tailor-like 

 riders, who, when their horses have shied, have tumbled off, and this is 

 confessed by the innumerable anonymous letters that from time to time 

 have appeared in the papers of the day, all of which acknowledge to a 

 fall. Also there is an unhappy race of beings in this world who feel so 

 convinced that they need to raise for themselves characters of humanity, 

 that they must seize on some passing circumstance on which to found 

 their desires. The poor, as I have before said, are sure to go to the wall 

 in any alleged reformation, and therefore in this instance, the poorest of 

 all are taken on whom to work a hardship on the score of humanity. I 

 hear, through anonymous writers, not one word of whose communications 

 I believe, that all sorts of cruelties are practised on dogs in harness ; one 

 of these nameless correspondents of the Morning Herald stated, that 

 when one dog dropped dead in harness, or had been cruelly despatched 

 by his owner's knife, had then been immediately given as food to his 

 canine companions. That dogs are starved, beaten, or cruelly treated, 

 etc. etc. etc., and that nature by the formation and peculiarities of the 

 dog, has pointed out to man its unfitness as a beast of draught. 



A dog, in proportion to its size and strength, is more fitted than a 

 horse to draw burthens. It is almost impossible to gall his shoulders, 

 from the movable nature of his skin, and he needs no shoes nailed to his 

 feet to protect them against the roads, nor an iron gag in his mouth to 

 guide him. The moment the dog-cart stops, the dog can and will on the 

 cold stones, their very coldness being a comfort to him, lie down and rest 

 and sleep. If he is near water, he will lie down in that, and be the more 

 refreshed. A horse will not nor cannot do this in harness, and were he 

 to lie down on cold flag-stones or in water, or even stand in the cold air 

 when in a perspiration, the horse would very likely die. The dog per- 

 spires at the mouth, and is not susceptible of the illness commonly called 

 a cold, and, according to his size, is capable of greater exertion, and of a 



