44 REMARKS ON KENNEL LAMENESS. 



equally friendly footing. Some years since, when 

 staying at Hangerford for the purpose of hunting, I 

 saw in Mr. Wardens kennel a doe which was kept in 

 an out-house close to the kennel-door, she was re- 

 markably tame, and came in generally to feed with 

 hounds at the trough, and it was really wonderful to see 

 with what avidity she would eat, not only the meal, 

 but also the boiled flesh.* She afterwards walked 

 out with the pack in the paddock, and caused 

 much amusement by her playful antics : this was, 

 no doubt, one reason why Mr. Warde's hounds were 

 so notoriously steady from deer in the Marlborough 

 forest. But to return to my subject. If care be 

 taken that the straw is well swept off, and the dung 

 carefully picked up before the courts are washed, 

 there will be no danger of dirt accumulating in 

 the drain, so as to stop it up. In many places, 

 the fellmongers buy the dung which is picked up 

 in the kennels, and use it for cleaning the skins 

 during the operation of dressing them. This, if sold, 

 is the perquisite of the boiler, but no man who had a 

 farm in his hands, would, I should suppose, allow of 

 so great an abuse. If the floors of the lodging-rooms 

 are not made of large slabs of stone, they should be 

 laid with bricks called quarries, and not common 

 bricks, as many are, — in cement, and not in mortar, 

 which will render the place not only drier, but much 

 sweeter. By attending to these hints, and taking the 

 rules laid down by Beckford, with regard to the main 



* Deer are well known to have a great desire to eat almost anything offered to 

 tliera. The author has frequently fed the deer in Magdalene Park, Oxford, after 

 breakfast, with buttered rolls, ham, and all sorts of meat, gloves, handkerchiefs, 

 paper, and even cinders, thrown to ihem from the windows. 



