MEAL MIXED WITH SAND. 59 



in the hunting season ; and if any experiments are to 

 be tried in feeding on different kinds of meal, it 

 should be done during the summer months, as there 

 would be a considerable risk in tampering with 

 the constitutions of a pack of fox-hounds during 

 work. Care should always be taken to have a stock 

 of old oatmeal on jhand, and to lay it in at a 

 proper time. When the late Sir Harry Goodricke 

 died, he had at his kennel at Thrussington (between 

 Leicester and Melton), sufficient old oatmeal for three 

 year's consumption, all from his own estates in Ire- 

 land. Sir Harry had nearly an hundred couples of 

 hounds to feed, hunting five and six days a week, 

 with a separate establishment of unentered puppies at 

 Mount Sorrel. Barley-flour by itself makes hounds 

 scratch themselves and stare in their coats ; and oat- 

 meal which has been too highly dried on a kiln will 

 have the same effect upon them. When oatmeal has 

 been adulterated with barley-flour, it is easily per- 

 ceived when hounds are out, by their constantly 

 leaving their work to lap water from the pits and 

 ditches near at hand ; it is also frequently adulterated 

 with maize or Indian corn, a remarkably heating 

 thing; the only plan to prevent being thus cheated, 

 is to go to a really respectable tradesman and give 

 the best price. The Scotch meal is the best, that is if 

 procured genuine,* the Scotch are better farmers 

 than the Irish, their harvest is generally better carried, 

 and the oats are better and cleaner winnowed. f 



* The mealmen who supply the London tradesmen from the Scotch markets 

 have been detected, as I was informed by a master of hounds in Scotland, by 

 regrinding sand into the oatmeal. 



f I'he weight of a sack of oatmeal is twelve score pounus. 



