72 NOTITIA VENATICA. 



they are to be taken out to exercise by daybreak, as tbey ought to be, 

 three or four o'clock in the afternoon is quite late enough for the feed- 

 ing hour, as they have then time to digest their food sufficiently before 

 the next day. When the puppies first come up from their quarters, 

 they should be fed two or three times a day, unless they are very high 

 in flesh and likely to grow too large for the pack ; but, as they advance 

 in their education and condition, and the effects of the distemper begin 

 to wear off, they should be taught to feed only once in the day. A dog 

 is almost a carnivorous animal ; and, as he is, like all animals of that 

 description, enabled by nature to go many hours without food, so also is 

 his stomach formed to contain at one meal sufficient for at least one day's 

 digestion, without feeling his strength and vigour impaired in the same 

 degree as the horse would, or any other graminivorous beast. Although 

 dogs are, undoubtedly speaking, naturally carnivorous, we sometimes 

 meet with accounts of their living in nearly a natural state on fish and 

 even vegetables. In Siberia their chief food consists of fish, and Ave 

 may also read that, in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, dogs are bred up 

 on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when oftered them by our circum- 

 navigators. Hounds should never be allowed to eat to satiety ; Sir B. 

 Graham, who at one time himself performed the office of feeder, and 

 whose authority on matters relating to feeding and kennel management 

 was never doubted for a moment, considered it as most injurious to con- 

 dition, to allow them to fill themselves at the trough. It is the custom 

 of some huntsmen during the hunting season to draw those hounds 

 which look thin, and give them some meat in the afternoon. I must 

 confess it is a system I do not admire : a hound fed at three or four 

 o'clock in an afternoon is totally unfit to run a burst at eleven o'clock 

 the next morning. It is a much better plan to make such as will not 

 feed one day wait till the next ; by that means they soon learn to feed 

 at a proper hour, as they ought to do. When animals reject their food, 

 depend upon it there is a good reason for it ; and nothing is so good for 

 the stomach, when disordered, as a Httle fasting : such was the system 

 pursued by the great Napoleon, Avho preferred it to taking medicine 

 when unwell. When hounds whose constitutions are delicate become a 

 little below the mark, the better plan is to let them miss one day's hunt- 

 ing ; by that means they will gain more vigour than by overloading 

 their stomachs with food, Avhich will do them more good when it is on 

 their backs than it will when it is inside their ribs. If you wish yoiu* 

 hounds to run well up, and at the same time to be stout in an afternoon, 

 keep them high in condition, always feed thick, proportioning the quan- 

 tity to the work, and never later than nine o'clock in the forenoon, even 

 eight o'clock is better. Some wiseacres fancy that a hound fed at three 

 or four in the evening Avill be stouter at the end of the day ; but it is 

 ridiculous to suppose that a carnivorous animal like a foxhound can ever 

 feel distress from want of food during thirty-six hours, provided he is 

 well fed at other regular and stated periods. Mr. Warde, whose grand 

 amusement in the latter part of his long hunting career consisted chiefly 

 in drawing and feeding his hounds, was a great advocate for a little af- 

 ternoon stuffing ; and, Avhen inspecting the pack for the foUowiug day's 



