312 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



and night before he decided upon the sire best suited to 

 answer his purpose ; but his judgment seldom failed. 



Bad hounds eat the same quantity of food as good 

 ones, and as my ambition always has been to have the 

 best animals of their kind, so would I have a good and 

 clever pack of harriers, if I thought it worth while to 

 keep them at all. For this purpose I should get together 

 some young unentered foxhounds and a few of the old 

 blue mottled southerns, and then model a pack to my 

 fancy. 



As soon as the corn is harvested hare-hunting may 

 commence, but sport of course cannot be expected thus 

 early. As in the cub-hunting season, this is the time to 

 break in and blood the young hounds, and if the country 

 is an enclosed one, and hares tolerably plentiful, you will 

 soon catch hares enough for this purpose, and some to 

 spare. Harriers to be good must be kept in good heart 

 and blood, and all the hares they kill in a day must not 

 be reserved for currant jelly sauce at home. When hares 

 are chopped by them, these may be taken away ; but 

 when they have earned their game by a good run it 

 should never be taken from them, or your hounds will 

 soon become slack and indifferent in their work. Our 

 old pack were expert carvers, in which they were duly en- 

 couraged by their master, and it required a pretty quick 

 hand to get a hare out of their clutches. This, as first 

 whipper-in, I never troubled my head about, unless upon 

 some very particular occasion, when a lady had expressed 

 a wish for a hunted one. The farmers who joined us 

 always had the hare, if they could save her, and it was 

 great fun to me to see how they would puff and blow 

 away, and cram their horses at desperate places, when 



