The Foxhound. 77 



remaining perfectly still, it is when he is confronted 

 by four cross-roads.) 



''The development of character in a pack of fox- 

 hounds (we can best speak of them en masse, 

 though the evolution is but the combined training 

 of a hundred pupils), depends so much upon the 

 influence and sympathy of the individual huntsman 

 that we often see a pack temporarily made, or 

 marred, in a very few seasons. The confidence and 

 eager obedience which hounds show to their hunts- 

 man is evident from the time he calls them out of 

 covert for a flying start, to the supreme moment 

 when, every effort of their own being exhausted, he 

 has the opportunity of carrying them to the line of 

 their sinking fox, and there leaving them to run, with 

 hackles up, to the death. By the reliance and 

 readiness evinced by a pack of hounds in their 

 huntsman, you may best take the measure of his 

 talent for getting them to hunt. Foxhounds are 

 very keen critics. 



'' Their fox away, down a quiet cool breeze, it is not 

 less than marvellous how quickly eighteen couples of 

 hounds will force their way through brake and thicket 

 and thorn, to the man they trust. Fifteen couples 

 will be with the horn, in, perhaps, sixty seconds ; the 

 other three couples ere sixty acres are crossed, 

 though they have to dive and dart through twice 



