32 SPEED OF THE PACK. 



that I have seen very good sport with very un- 

 handsome packs, consisting of hounds of various 

 sizes, differing from one another as much in 

 shape and look as in their colour ; nor could I 

 trace the least sign of consanguinity amongst 

 tliem : considered separately, the hounds were 

 good ; as a pack of hounds, they were not to be 

 commended ; nor could you be satisfied with 

 any thing that looked so very incomplete. You 

 will find nothing so essential to your sport, as 

 that your hounds should run well together ; nor 

 can this end be better attained than by keeping 

 them as near as you can of the same sort, size, 

 and shape. 



A great excellence in a pack of hounds, is the 

 head they carry ; and that pack may be said to 

 go the fastest that can run ten miles the soonest, 

 notwithstanding the hounds, separately, may not 

 run so fast as many others. A pack of hounds 

 considered in a collective body go fast in pro- 

 portion to the excellence of their noses, and the 

 head they carry ; as that traveller generally gets 

 soonest to his journey's end who stops least upon 

 the road. Some hounds that I have hunted 

 with would creep all through the same hole, 

 though they might have leapt the hedge, and 

 would follow one another in a string, as true as 



