118 SYSTEM OF KENNEL AND 



him time to amend his ways, having seen many 

 slack at first, turn out the quickest in their second 

 season. Beckford relates an instance of a young 

 hound never joining the pack, either in hunting or 

 drawing, until one day, catching a view of his 

 beaten game, he ran up for the finish, and ever 

 afterwards pressed forward to the front. When, 

 however, it becomes clear that any hound has not 

 speed sufficient to keep his proper place, there is 

 very little prospect of improvement ; in this respect 

 it is not likely his pace will be increased by feeling 

 his own deficiency ; it is more than likely he will 

 cut corners or become a rank skirter. There may 

 be also one or two individuals occasionally too fast 

 for the body of the pack, which must go with the 

 slows to some other destination — drafting from 

 head to tail being the only method of making a 

 pack of foxhounds hold well together. 



There is an old simile — a very old one — so old 

 that even Beckford thought it too threadbare to 

 notice in his "Thoughts on Hunting," comparing 

 the running of foxhounds to the flight of pigeons, 

 almost universally adopted by our modern chroni- 

 clers of runs in BelUs Life^ The Fields and Land 

 and Water, with the addendum of " clustering 

 so close together, that they might be covered 

 by a casting-net." Beckford uses (if we remember 

 rightly) one more appropriate, expressing his 

 opinion that they ought to be, when in chase, 

 "like the horses in the chariot of the sun — all 

 abreast," and in this order pigeons take their 

 flight over the fields, in a long extended line. 



