206 SYSTEM OF KENNEL AND 



CHAPTER XXV. 



''Beware! the ditch still lurks unseen, 

 Which oft the cause of dire mishap has been; 

 But who can pause the dangerous leap to scan ? 

 Miltonia victa, would'st thou own the man ? 

 No — no — rush on, and ev'ry doubt defy — 

 ^ Sans peur et sans reproche,'' the hunter's cry." 



JMen, horses, and hounds adapted to country — The shires and the 

 provinces— Dick "Woodcraft and the Quorn — Comes to grief with 

 Ploughman — His soliloquy — The first check — Hark ! halloa ! — Up 

 and down wind — Dick Woodcraft assists in recovering the line — 

 Things improve — Fire and water — Tom Clearwell hors de combat 

 — Woodcraft takes the horn — Astonishes the field — Finish to the 

 run of the season — The mystery solved. 



Particular countries require a particular sort of 

 hound suited to them ; and not hounds only, but 

 men and horses also ; for the most talented hunts- 

 man, transferred with his highflier out of Leices- 

 tershire or Northamptonshire, into Hants or Berks, 

 without an acquaintance with the peculiarity of 

 the country and the running of the foxes, would 

 find himself all abroad, and entirely out of his 

 element — and vice versa, take a good woodland 

 huntsman, from flints and fallows, and his little 

 spinnies of about two thousand acres each, down 

 into the shires, mounted on his famous hunter 

 Ploughman, everything would be different, and alto- 

 gether a different style of doing things to what he 

 had been accustomed. Large open pastures, with 

 rasping quickset fences and bullfinches, posts and 



