LATE TRYING HURTFUL. 285 



You say, you generally hunt at a late hour : 

 after a tolerably good run, try not to find 

 another fox. Should you be long in finding, 

 and should you not have success afterwards, it 

 will hurt your hounds : should you try a long 

 time, and not find, that also will make them 

 slack. Never try to find a fox after one 

 o'clock ; you had better return home, and hunt 

 again on the next day. Not that I, in general, 

 approve of hunting two days following with the 

 same hounds : the trying so many hours in vain, 

 and the being kept so long off their food, both 

 contiTbute to make them slack, and nothing 

 surely is more contrary to the true spirit of fox- 

 hunting ; for fox-hounds ought always to be 

 above their work. This is another particular, 

 in which hare-hunting and fox-hunting totally 

 differ; for harriers cannot be hunted too much, 

 as long as they are able to hunt at all. The 

 slower they go, the less likely they will be to 

 over-run the scent, and the sooner, in all pro- 

 bability, will they kill their game. 1 have a 

 friend who hunted his five days following, and 

 assured me he had better sport with them the 

 last day than he had the first. 



I remember to have heard, that a certain 

 pack of fox-hounds, since become famous, were 



