108 The Hunting Countries of England 



in proportion to tlie degree of nastiness : and we try 

 to prove it by asserting tliat his instinct will make 

 him run a red herrings while education is necessary to 

 make him run a fox. But the fact remains, that a 

 good pronounced odour will drive a weaker one out 

 of his nostrils, or at all events act detrimentally. In 

 plain language, a single well-manured field is five 

 minutes^ law to a fox : and well-farmed arable is 

 seldom long fi^ee fi'om the tainting effects of savoury 

 top dressing. The distinction of smell is altogether 

 apart from the delicacy of nose which allows a hound 

 to discriminate between fox and hare — as exemplified 

 in a pack once owned by a still-living sportsman, 

 which in the same season and in the same country, 

 killed thirty-two foxes and seventy-five hares, never 

 changing from one scent to the other when settled to 

 a line. 



These remarks, thoug*h, are applicable to plough 

 countries generally — not to the Grove only or 

 especially. It may or may not, be relevant, either, 

 to assert that there are many more good packs of 

 hounds in provincial countries than in the Shires — a 

 fact easily to be understood when it is borne in mind 

 how frequently Masterships are passed from hand to 

 hand in the Midlands, and also how little the neces- 

 sary virtues of a foxhound vary between one country 

 and another. A foxhound like a poet must be born ; 

 and, like a gentleman, it takes three generations to 

 breed him. The poetry of form and the purity of 

 birth are only to be seen in old kennels ; and many of 

 those old kennels exist in out-of-the-way places. 

 This brings in a note that the Meynell blood (perhaps 



