54 NOTITIA VENATIOA. 



But to return to my subject. If care be taken that the straw is well 

 swept off, and the dung carefully picked up, before the courts are Avashed, 

 there will be no danger of dirt accumulating in the drain, so as to stop 

 it up. In many places, the fellmongers buy the dung which is picked 

 up in the kennels, and use it for cleaning the skins during the operation 

 of dressing them. This, if sold, is the perquisite of the boiler ; but no 

 man who had a farm in his hands would, I should suppose, allow of so 

 great an abuse. If the floors of the lodging-rooms are not made of 

 large slabs of stone, they should be laid with bricks called quarries, and 

 not common bricks, as many are — in cement, and not in mortar, which 

 will render the place not only drier, but much sweeter : and if the 

 whole of the building were composed of bricks instead of stone, I have 

 no hesitation in saying that it would be less likely to become damp in 

 any weather. By attending to these hints, even in case the architect 

 had only some old out-buildings or barn to convert to the purpose, a 

 good kennel may be built and properly arranged, provided the one great 

 essential be obtained, and that is, a healthy situation. 



A kennel may be complete in every other respect ; it may, to all ap- 

 pearance, be Avarm in winter and cool in summer, and replete Avith every 

 sort of convenience ; but the one thing may be Avanting, namely, 

 health. In fact it may have the greatest of all curses next to madness 

 to a pack of foxhounds — kennel-lameness, or shoulder lameness, as it 

 is sometimes called ; but Avhether that is a proper name remains to be 

 proved, as no one has ever satisfactorily defined it, nor given positive 

 proof Avhether the grief be situated in the shoulders, or loins, or spine. 

 The cause also of the disease Avas never clearly developed for many 

 years. Colonel Cook has Avritten but very little on the subject, and the 

 instances adduced are only relative to hounds hunting in the New 

 Forest. He has given some reasons for their being lame : the most 

 probable one is, the damp from the black bogs ; but, after all, he comes 

 to no decided conclusion. Another reason Avliich he gives for the 

 malady is, their feet being continually pricked by the short stubby furze 

 so prevalent in the New Forest. I have experienced the same annoyance 

 myself, although not to so great an extent. In part of the country 

 Avhich I hunted (over Coleshill Heath, in Warwickshire) large fields of 

 gorse, Avhere the land Avas poor, were groAvn for the express purpose 

 of cutting as food for coavs. It is mown once every year, and bruised 

 in a mill, and the stumps and prickles which are left behind are a 

 grievous impediment to hounds in chase. Although hounds are fre- 

 quently lame after running far over this land of land, their Avay of 

 travelling is very difterent from the manner in Avhicli they move when 

 lame in the shoulders ; a person conversant Avith hounds Avill see it in 

 an instant. As far as regards my personal experience, I have every 

 reason to believe, having inquired diligently of many practical men, that 

 the grief arises from one cause only, and that is, from the situation of 

 the kennel. If you ask a sportsman Avliat is the reason Avhy Mr. So-and- 

 So's hounds are always half of them lame ? the ansAver is, " The kennel 

 is damp, I should suppose ;" yet, after all, the kennels are, to the eye, 

 as dry as tinder. Ask another the same question, and he says, " Why, 



