296 THOUGHTS UPON HUNTING. 



for a pack of fox-hounds ; for the same ideas of hunting 

 will most probably stick by him as long as he lives. 



Your huntsman is an old man : should he have been 

 working hard all his life on wrong principles, he may be 

 now incorrigible. 



Sometimes you will meet with a good kennel-hunts- 

 man ; sometimes an adive and judicious one in the field : 

 some are clever at finding a fox, others are better after he 

 is found ; while perfeftion in a huntsman, like perfedion 

 in any thing else, is scarcely ever to be met with : — there 

 are not only good, bad, and indifferent huntsmen, but 

 there are, perhaps, a few others, who being, as it were, of 

 a different species, should be classed apart 3 — I mean such 

 as have real genius. It is this peculiar excellence, which I 

 {old you, in a former Letter, I would rather- wish my first 

 whipper-in to be possessed of than my huntsman j and one 

 reason, among others, is, that he, I think, would have more 

 opportunities of exercising it. 



The keeping of hounds clean and healthy, and bringing 

 them into the field in their fullest vigour, is the excellence 



