188 FIELD AND FERN. 



won in the teeth of a whole pack of infuriated 

 hounds ? 



In his code of hunting rules he is inflexibly merci- 

 ful to the hunted. He will not have the dogs aided 

 by any cudgel play, and the man who loosed a fresh 

 dog in the middle of a general engagement on the 

 Jed was pretty speedily '^ pronounced in contempt.'^ 

 On one occasion the field begged him in vain to let 

 them see a kill in a mill sluice. Nothing would 

 move him. He tied np the hounds, and chased out 

 the otter over the bank with the terriers into the 

 Teviot, and when it took to a stronghold there, he 

 would not dig it out. Let the " dry-shodded ones^^ 

 also beware how he offers them a back for the future* 

 In short, as his Boswell observes of him : '^ He^s sic 

 a man. I can hardly tell you what he is : he^s here, 

 theer, and a' roads ; always moving — he^s likest a 

 dog through the water of aught ;" and then, throwing 

 all his cumulative force into the simile, ^' He^d think 

 nought, wad Doctor, of swimming across the Solway, 

 clicking an otter's tail.'^* 



* Impurity lias been hinted at in the ease of the Dandie Dinmont terrier 

 bitch " Meadow," so I send you this genealoprical note. " Stonehenge" says 

 Sir George H. S. Douglas's Pepper was the sire of Meadow, and Schann her 

 dam. I fear there is rlifficulty and error here. Besides others of the same 

 name. Sir George had //; ree Peppers of fame in succession, at Birsieslees. Which 

 of them Stonehenge means I cannot say, but it matters httle, as neither was 

 the sire of Meadow. Her sire was a " young dog" which Sir George Douglas 

 got from Mr. Brisbane. He afterwards gave him to a clergyman in York- 

 shu-e. His name, I think, wa.s Mustard, certainly not Pepper. This dog was 

 bred by a " mud student" in the Coldstream or Cornliill district, and had for 

 his sire a dog Dandie, bred by Mr. Frain of Trows. The dam of Mustard (that 

 is the paternal gvand-Am. of Meadow) belonged to the said "mud student," 

 hat where he ffot her or how xJie was bred has oiecer heen satisf actor II i/ determined, 

 and it is solely on this point that the imjnded impurity of Meadow rests. I am 

 satisfied that the bitch was pure. I have a great-grand-daughter of Meadow's 

 at this moment, and it is the greatest beauty of its age and species I have 

 •ever yet seen. My Shami-ock was by Sii- George's Pepper III. (from Vixen), 



