214 HORSES AND HOUNDS. 



trine upon some points, neitlier can his theory and practice be 

 admitted as consistent. In one of his letters he states that his 

 chief object in writing was to prevent the improper use of dis- 

 cipline, and that " we ought not to suffer unnecessary severity 

 to be used with an animal to whom we are obliged for so much 

 diversion." 



Upon feeding hounds, he remarks, "All hounds (more espe- 

 cially young ones) should be called over often in the kennel, and 

 most huntsmen practise this lesson as they feed their hounds : 

 they flog them while they feed them, and if they have not 

 always a bellyful one way, they seldom fail to have it the 

 other." Instead of condemning so monstrous and barbarous a 

 practice, of which any huntsman who could be guilty ought 

 himself to have been flogged at the cart-tail, he coolly remarks, 

 '*' It is not, however, my intention to oppose so general a prac- 

 tice, in which there may be some utility. I shall only observe, 

 that it should be used with discretion, lest the whip should fall 

 heavily in the kennel on such as never deserve it in the field." 

 Very milk-and-water indeed. I can only say that a man who 

 w^ould flog hounds in this manner, and at feeding time above 

 all other times of the day, is a proper subject to come under 

 Mr. Martin's Act, and the treadmill is his only fit place. 



He remarks again, that " Such hounds as are notorious 

 offenders should also feel the lash and hear a rate as they go to 

 the covert ; it may be a useful hint to them, and may prevent a 

 severer flogging afterwards." It strikes me as a monstrous ab- 

 surdity, and a most wanton piece of cruelty as well, to allow a 

 whipper-in to cut a hound nearly in two, as some of these 

 gentry will do, when the dog is committing no fault at all, but 

 quietly walking to the covert side, and in the presence of the 

 huntsman, ivliere he is entitled to protection / 



When a hound is cciught, Jlagrcmte delicto, in the actual com- 

 mission of the crime of running riot, then, and _ then only, 

 should he be punished ; he then knows for what he is corrected; 

 but to punish a hound in cold blood for no fault at all, and 

 only as a hint of what he is to expect, is, in my humble opinion, 

 a most cruel and unwarrantable act. 



A boy may as well be flogged at school, merely because his 

 master thinks he may commit some fault during the day. When 

 a senior at school, I once witnessed the effect of too much 

 severity upon rather a dull boy, v/hose failure was only in 

 ability, not in disposition, to learn. He had a task set him by 

 the master, in which occurred one hard word which he could 

 not pronounce corrccly, and having been beaten for it, he 

 either committed the same fault again, or stopped at it, and 



