CRITICISMS OF HIS FOLLOWERS 165 



period the average number of Masters exhibiting has 

 not exceeded twenty-five. In regard to these Masters, 

 it has been said that they breed with an eye to Peter- 

 borough, i.e., with a view to Show triumph. Nothing 

 can be more absurd than this indictment made against 

 such famous sportsmen as the late Lord Willoughby 

 de Broke. The truth is, that, so far as there can be any 

 certainty in the breeding of Uve stock, foxhound-breed- 

 ing has been reduced to an exact science. Let me 

 again quote from Mr. Rawdon B. Lee's work on 

 "Modern Sporting Dogs"; "No hound or dog has 

 changed so Httle in appearance and character during a 

 century as the foxhound. There have been no crazes 

 for fashionable colour, or for head formed or ears hung 

 on purely fanciful principles. Hunters wanted a dog 

 for work, they soon provided one, and have kept and 

 sustained that animal for the purpose." 



The first object of the hound-breeding Master is to 

 bring a pack of hounds into the field which can account 

 for its foxes satisfactorily, and he must remember that 

 the hounds which can race over the big pastures of 

 Leicestershire would be utterly at fault in the rocky 

 hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland. 



'* He cried upon it at the merest loss, 

 And twice to-day picked out the dullest scent." 



I don't know that the argument between the Lord 

 and his huntsman in the induction about the relative 

 merits of the hounds has anything to do with the 

 Taming of the Shrew, but it proves that Shakespeare 

 would have been a good hunting critic in these days. 



