72 DELICATE FEEDERS. 



condition, as it cannot be long continued without cor- 

 rupting the state of their blood ; and as vegetable 

 food cannot be entirely dispensed with, the excess of 

 the acescency may be in a great measure avoided, by 

 mixing in each meal a small portion of common chalk, 

 and administering to the hounds thus affected, to each 

 a pill, containing eight grains of calomel and thirty of 

 jalap on every third morning for five or six mornings, 

 and feeding them twice a-day as long as they are 

 taking the pills ; if it is in the summer, and the 

 weather is fine, they may go to moderate exercise with 

 the rest. Some huntsmen are in the habit of using 

 common reddle mixed up in the food once a week 

 during: the summer months. I once asked Wm. 

 Boxall, who succeeded J. Wood in the office of hunts- 

 man to the Warwickshire pack, why he used it, but 

 the only intelligence I could gain was that "it was a 

 rare thing for the blood." Now reddle is nothing 

 more nor less than red-chalk, which is an absorbent 

 earth, and I could never discover any peculiar proper- 

 ties in it which are not found in the common white- 

 chalk, excepting its difference in colour. Other 

 hounds which have the same symptoms as those de- 

 scribed above, are also, at times, affected with purging, 

 which arises from the same causes, and is part and 

 parcel of the same complaint ; and until a more 

 healthy action of the stomach is produced, we must, 

 in vain, look for an amendment in either the appetite 

 or secretions. From an undue fermentation and the 

 digestion becoming morbid, an acid and phlegm- 

 like accumulation takes place on the coats of the 

 stomach; and as Dr. Whytt has justly observed, 



