H2 HUNTING DIRECTORY. 



Obedience indispensable 



management, will be a necessary consequence of it. 

 Obedience, surely, is not all that is required of them : 

 they should be taught to distinguish of themselves right 

 from wrong, or I know not how they are to be managed ; 

 when, as it frequently happens, we cannot see what they 

 are at, and must take their words for it. A hound that 

 hears a voice which has often rated him, and that hears 

 the whip he has often ^elt, I know, will stop. — I also 

 know, he will commit the same fault again, if he has been 

 accustomed to be guilty of it. 



" Obedience, you very rightly observe, is a necessary 

 quality in a hound, for he is useless without it. It is 

 therefore an excellent principle for a huntsman to set 

 out upon ; yet, good as it is, I think it may be carried too 

 far. I would not have him insist on too much, or tor- 

 ment his hounds, mal-a-propos, by exacting of them by 

 force what is not absolutely necessary to your diversion. 

 You say, he intends to enter your hounds at hare — is it 

 to teach them obedience? — Does he mean to encourage 

 vice in them, to correct it afterwards ? — I have heard, 

 indeed, that the way to make hounds steady from hare, 

 is to enter them at hare : that is, to encourage them to 

 hunt her. It requires more faith than I pretend to, to 

 believe so strange a paradox. 



"It concerns me to be obliged to differ from you in 

 opinion ; but since it cannot now be helped, we will pur- 

 sue the subject, and examine it throughout ; permit me 

 then to ask you, what it is you propose from the entering 

 of your hounds at hare ? Two advantages, I shall pre- 

 sume, you expect from it ; — The teaching of your hounds 

 to hunt, and teaching them to be obedient. — However 



