6o HOUNDS. 



giving them as much new milk and nourishing food 

 as they would eat, and they always came back sound. 



The following summer I built fresh kennels on a 

 clay soil, and since then I have never had a hound 

 with even a suspicion of kennel lameness. I am 

 certain it is a question of soil and surroundings, 

 hounds being; much more liable to it when kennels 

 are built on a porous soil, such as chalk and lime- 

 stone, than on clay. 



My theory is that there are germs present in 

 certain soils that hounds contract direct from the 

 soil, and that the disease attacks their nerve power, 

 which naturally results in loss of power of the 

 muscles, as the latter are nourished by the nerves, 

 and, this being the case, there is loss of muscular 

 development, which causes many to think that the 

 disease is muscular rheumatism 



PVom my own observations I feel almost certain 

 that it is a nerve disease, and not a muscular one, as 

 usually supposed. As I have remarked elsewhere, 

 the commencement of kennel lameness may often 

 be attributed to summer idleness. Let hounds be 

 walked out for several hours daily during the summer 

 months, in the early morning and the late afternoon, 

 as far away from the precincts of the kennel as 

 circumstances permit. I have known some hunts- 

 men who think a quarter of an hour's walk in the 

 morning and a run in the grass yard in the evening 

 is sufficient exercise, but it is not, and it will in the 



