76 HARE-HUNTING AND HARRIERS 



size carries him faster over the ground, so he is more 

 likely to overrun the scent and foil it so that he cannot 

 recover it. Some of these hounds, however, have a 

 wonderful power of carrying a scent at full speed, 

 and will race into a hare in such a time as to finish 

 her up almost as soon as found ; this, however, spoils 

 sport in great measure, as, by their speed, they pre- 

 vent all those artifices on the part of the hare which 

 give zest to this otherwise slow amusement. For this 

 reason it is that harriers appear to have as good noses 

 as beagles, though they really have not ; for by depriv- 

 ing the hare of scope to double back, by pressing so 

 closely upon her scent, they give themselves so much 

 less to do and have only to work out a forward scent. 

 Many huntsmen of harriers now cast forward as if 

 hunting a fox, and with reason too, for, as the hare 

 cannot double back, she tries all her wiles in a forward 

 or side direction — hence the alteration in the principles 

 called for by the alteration in the speed of hounds. 

 It is, however," adds " Stonehenge," " in my opinion, 

 an alteration for the worse." 



This description, by one of the foremost writers on 

 sport of his generation, seems to me to sum up admir- 

 ably some of the objections to the foxhound-harrier 

 which were perceived fifty years ago by a fair-minded 

 and far-seeing sportsman. Beckford, seventy years 

 before " Stonehenge," thus wrote, had vigorously 

 expressed his ideas on the same subject. " I have, 

 he says, " also seen a hare hunted by high-bred fox 

 hounds : yet I confess to you it gave me not the least 

 idea of what hare-hunting ought to be." 



Happily for hare-hunting, the men who thus set the 

 fashion at the early part of last century and attempted 

 to transform a pursuit differing in all its character- 

 istics essentially from fox-hunting into the vain sem- 



