SCIENCE OF FOXHUNTING. 11 



good show when paraded at the place of meeting, 

 but help only to swell the chorus or fill the pack. 

 How very few really good stanch hounds can be 

 selected out of any pack. We know, by dearly- 

 bought experience, what a lot of rubbish is con- 

 tained even in unentered drafts from kennels of 

 long- established reputation ! The strength and 

 efficiency of the pack depends upon the number of 

 three, four, and five-year-old hounds you can bring 

 into the field these being the working bees of the 

 hive the others, in comparison, mere drones and 

 a good number of these veterans prove incontestibly 

 the judgment of the breeder. We consider a fox- 

 hound of five years to be just in the zenith of his 

 power, and if of a stout, hard, running sort, will 

 hold his own for two or three seasons more. We 

 have possessed hounds in their eighth season, 

 running at the head of the pack, and have still a 

 terrier living who has passed his seventeenth birth- 

 day, and, until within a few months, retaining all 

 his faculties of nose. 



The renowned John Ward was, of all his 

 contempory masters, the most successful breeder of 

 foxhounds, and although hunting four days a week 

 latterly, in a country infamous for laming hounds, 

 his entry did not exceed ten or twelve couples, the 

 majority of which generally went right. He would 

 de iberate sometimes for a week what sire ought 

 to^be put to a certain dam, and the result of his 

 caution rarely showed an error in judgment. Early 

 whelps are always the strongest and straightest 

 on their legs, as a general rule, being like oysters, 



