144 HUNTING DIRECTORY. 



Impropriety of Entering 



may pay too clearly for. Enter your hounds in small 

 covers, or in such large ones as have ridings cut in them ; 

 whippers-in can then get at them, can always see what 

 they are at, and I have no doubt that you may have a 

 pack of fox-hounds steady to fox by this means, without 

 adopting so preposterous a method as that of first making 

 hare-hunters of them. You will find, that hounds, thus 

 instructed what game they are to hunt, and what they 

 are not, will stop at a word ; because they will under- 

 stand you ; and after they have been treated in this 

 manner, a smack only of the whip, will spare you the 

 inhumanity of cutting your hounds in pieces (not very 

 justly) for faults which you yourself have encouraged 

 them to commit. 



" I think, in your last letter, you seem very anxious to 

 get your young hounds well blooded to fox, at the same 

 time that you talk of entering them at hare. How am I 

 to reconcile such contradictions ? If the blood of fox is 

 of so much use, surely you cannot think the blood of a 

 hare a matter of indifference, unless you should be of 

 opinion that a fox is better eating. — Nature, I suppose, 

 never intended they should hunt sheep, yet we very well 

 know, when once they have killed sheep, that they have 

 no dislike to mutton afterwards. 



"You have conceived an idea, perhaps, that a fox- 

 hound is designed by nature to hunt a fox. Yet, surely, 

 if that vi^as your opinion, you would never think of enter- 

 ing him at any other game. I cannot, however, think 

 nature designed the dog, which we call a fox-hound, to 

 hunt fox only, since we know he will also hunt other 

 animals. That a well-bred fox-hound may give a pre- 



