46 REMARKS ON KENNEL LAMENESS. 



hounds are frequently lame after running far over this 

 kind of land, their way of travelling is very different 

 from the manner in which they move when lame in the 

 shoulders ; a person conversant with hounds will see 

 it in an instant. As far as regards my personal expe- 

 rience, I have every reason to believe, having inquired 

 diligently of many practical men, that the grief arises 

 from one cause only, and that is, from the situation of 

 the kennel. If you ask a sportsman what is the reason 

 why Mr. So and So's hounds are always half of them 

 lame ? The answer is, " The kennel is damp, I should 

 suppose ;" yet, after all, the kennels are, to the eye, 

 as dry as tinder. Ask another the same question, and 

 he says, " why, I think it must be kennel-lameness ;" 

 but, at the same time, knows no more what kennel- 

 lameness is than the ''man in the moon." The best 

 cause that I can attribute it to, is from the building 

 being either on a bed of sand or upon a sandstone 

 rock. Of the four kennels occupied by the writer 

 of these papers, two of them were decidedly subject 

 to the disease, — one particularly so ; they were both 

 built upon sand, one of them close upon a sandstone 

 rock, and what would generally be considered the 

 healthiest and driest spot in the world, and one 

 especially calculated for the purpose for which it was 

 used ; the lodging-rooms were well ventilated, with 

 good-sloping floors, and always were every thing that 

 cleanliness could demand; it was used during the 

 cub-hunting season by the Warwickshire hounds, 

 before the author occupied it, and only occasionally 

 in the winter for one or two nights at a time, no sign 

 of lameness occurred during that period ; but when it 



