THE OLD STAG-nOUND. 219 



sequences, were it possible, for a chance of seeing the grand old 

 lemon-pies run down a warrantable deer. It is a strange thing 

 that, not ten years before I was born, Mr. Shard was hunting 

 ■with them in the very neighbourhood where I was bred, and 

 entered to hounds with that fine sportsman, Mr. Robert Cock- 

 burn, and yet never a word have I heard spoken there concerning 

 them. Every one knew that Mr. Shard kept stag-hounds, and 

 most must have hunted with him ; but, bless their observant 

 hearts ! that there was any difference between his pack and 

 Mr. Yillebois's fox-hounds, or Mr. Chute's " Multum in Parvos," 

 never came within the scope of their philosophy. I wonder if 

 they would have noticed it, had he painted every hound a 

 bright bkie or red before going out of a morning 1 But not a 

 great deal is to be expected of the rustic intelligence which can 

 mistake an Esquimaux dog for a wolf, and live in abject terror 

 of what had been the j)et of the crew of the JPandora for months, 

 as was done there a few years ago, until a lucky shot stopped 

 the sheep-killer, and revealed the mistake that those who had 

 good opportunities of seeing him had fallen into. But, with 

 many, a dog is a dog and a hound a hound, the difference 

 between a hound and sheep-dog, say, for instance, lying prin- 

 cipally in the fact that one has a rough coat and the other a 

 smooth one. 



Let me get back to the Devon and Somerset since the old 

 hounds were sold, and very little is there to say about them 

 until Mr. Bisset took the helm in 1855, when the ship was 

 nearly wrecked, the deer all but gone, and things about as bad 

 as they well could be. What wonders he has worked ! how the 

 deer, of which at first he had to be wondrous careful, have in- 

 creased, until he can now work his will amongst them without 

 fear of spoiling the next season ! Need I say how popular 

 the sport has become, and how many are drawn into the lovely 

 west country by a chance of seeing " the ancient sport of kings," 

 as Mr. Carter termed it, when depicting a grand scene of a stag 

 at bay in his Academy picture of 1877 % How mid the charm of 



