284 THOUGHTS UPON HUNTING. 



you from changing it, or from knowing how faj? 

 it may be erroneous.* 



Before you have been long a fox-hunter, I ex- 

 pe6l to hear you talk of the ill luck which fo fre- 

 quently attends this diverfion. I can afilire you 

 it has provoked me often, and has made e'^jen a 

 far-Jon /wear. It was but the other day we expe- 

 rienced an extraordinary inftance of it. We 

 found, at the fame inflant, a brace of foxes in 

 the fame cover, and they both broke at the oppo- 

 lite ends of it ; the hounds foon got together, and 

 went off very well with one of them ; yet, not- 

 with landing this, fuch was our ill luck, that, 

 though the hunted fox took a circle of feveral 

 miles, he, at latt, croffed the line of the other 

 fox, the heel of which we hunted back to the 

 cover from whence we came : it is true, we per- 

 ceived that our fccnt worfted, and were going to 

 flop the hounds ; but the going off of a white 

 froft deceived us alfo in that. 



Many a fox have I known loft, by running 

 into houfes and ftables. It is not long lince my 

 hounds loll one, when hunting in the New Fo- 



* Thofe who can fuppofe the killing of a fox to be of no 

 fervice to a pack of fox -hounds, may fuppofe, perhaps, that it 



iloes them hurt. It is going but one flep further. 



reft: 



