322 SYSTEM OF KENNEL AND 



sport, cannot bring with them into the field the 

 portion of intellect wherewithal they may have been 

 endowed." 



With one exception we fully endorse every sen- 

 tence of this quotation from a brother master, and 

 that exception is — " that hounds of the present day 

 are bred faster." The system of the present era is 

 faster — not the hound. The speed of thorough- 

 bred foxhounds cannot be greater now than it was 

 seventy years ago. We may provoke a con- 

 temptuous smile from the fast man by such an 

 assertion ; yet such is the fact — the irrefragable fact. 

 We do not say indisputable, because men will 

 dispute and split straws about anything ; but if 

 watches go faster now than they did seventy years 

 ago, then may you claim greater speed for your 

 hounds than th.'it exhibited by Colonel Thornton^s 

 Merkin. "Then why or how comes it," demands 

 the pace man, " that we can run into and eat up in 

 fifteen or twenty minutes a fox that would have 

 taken a pack of the past century a day to kill ?" 



Gently, my fast friends. Your foxes are slower by 

 reason of over-feeding: and we suppose you will 

 admit that an alderman, after a civic feast, would 

 cut a poor figure in a foot-race of a mile the ensuing 

 morning. Then there are two more points for your 

 consideration. There is more than one distinct 

 species of fox in this country at the present time 

 which did not exist here seventy years ago — 

 although only one species of foxhound. Before 

 the introduction of French foxes some thirty or 

 forty years since, there were only two in the British 



