2 14 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



of them which remains. Of course a dry, hot day, a parched 

 pasture, a hot sun, is bad for scent. In a way, the action 

 of scent is not unlike that of smoke or steam. On certain 

 days a locomotive leaves a trail of steam or smoke that 

 ascends quickly to the upper air ; again, one that descends 

 as quickly to the earth, or hangs evenly in mid-air just 

 above its point of issue. On some days steam vanishes 

 from view directly upon leaving the mouth of the stack ; 

 again, it leaves a white path a quarter of a mile long in the 

 wake of the train. All these different aspects are doubtless 

 owing to some atmospheric influence, and just so it seems 

 to be with the scent of a fox — sometimes rising quickly, as 

 it does, sometimes clinging to the grass and bushes for 

 yards on either side of the line, or hanging slightly above 

 the earth so that the hounds instead of stooping to it race 

 away with heads up and sterns down, running, as the say- 

 ing is, with " scent breast-high." Sometimes it is spread 

 so wide to right or left of a line that every hound in the 

 pack, although running rods to either side of the line, can 

 "feel" it. 



That scent does not come from pads alone is evident from 

 the ability of hounds to follow it a long distance in water- 

 soaked ground where the fox has had to wade, or across a 

 wide stream which the fox has had to swim, the water 

 through which he swam having moved downward with the 

 current. It happens that scent will be good in one field 

 and bad in the next, one being sheltered by a piece of wood, 

 the other not. Conditions of the atmosphere of one field 

 may not exist in the next. That bare ground and fallow 

 land are not usually so good as grass and stubble is accounted 



