THOUGHTS UPON HUNTING, X49 



Harriers, to be gooci, like all other hounds, must be 

 kept to their own game : if you run fox with them, you 

 spoil them. Hounds cannot be perfedl, unless used to one 

 scent, and one stile of hunting. Harriers run fox in so dif- 

 ferent a stile from hare, that it is of great disservice to them 

 when they return to hare again : it makes them wild, and 

 teaches them to skirt. The high scent which a fox leaves, 

 the straightness of his running, the eagerness of the pursuit, 

 and the noise that generally accompanies it, all contribute 

 to spoil a harrier. 



i HOPE you agree with me, that it is a fault in a pack of 

 harriers to go too fast; for a hare is a little timorous ani- 

 mal, which we cannot help feeling some compassion for 

 at the very time when we are pursuing her destruction : we 

 should give scope to all her little tricks, nor kill her 

 foully, and over-matched*. Instind instruds her to make 



* The critic terms this, " a mode of destruftion somewhat beyond 

 brutal," (vide Monthly Review). I shall not pretend to justify that 

 conventional cruelty, which seems go universally to prevail — neither 

 will I ask the gentleman, who is so severe on roe, why he feeds the 

 lamb, and afterwards cuts his throat ; I mean only to consider cruelty 

 under the narrow limits which concern hunting — if it may be defined to 

 be, a pleasure which results from giving pain ; then, certainly, a sports » 

 man is much less cruel than he is thought. 



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