THE STAG HOUND 123 



in December 1825, and professed himself highly satisfied 

 with his equipment. ' Whatever Mr. Shard does, he does 

 with spirit ' — a prime requisite, I concur, in carted deer-hunt- 

 ing — and the turn-out generally appears to have been on the 

 Windsor model, as two good-natured friends of Mr. Shard's 

 acted as yeomen prickers, which, says ' Nimrod,' ' gave 

 the whole a very classical effect,' Mr. Shard's own person 

 being adorned and enlivened by a handsome belt to which a 

 bugle was suspended. They had not much of a hunt over a 

 fenceless and featureless country ; and the deer went for 

 three miles with a couple close at his haunches. The deer 

 after being taken was blooded in the tail, Sangrado's treat- 

 ment, or this half of it, being in vogue at that time with 

 stag-hunters ; and he was in such fine fighting form by the 

 evening that he seriously injured the first whipper-in. 

 Speaking of these big North Devon hounds, ' Nimrod ' 

 observes, ' I should not suspect the Hampshire flints 

 agreed with hounds of this great size ' ; nor did the Buck- 

 inghamshire flints and hills agree with the coarse, heavy- 

 shouldered, so-called staghound of the Ascot kennels of 

 thirty years ago. 



But the old Devon and Somerset hounds cannot have been 

 as slow as the Eoyal hounds in George III.'s time. The Eev. 

 Mr. Kussell writes of a celebrated trencher-fed pack and of 

 this blood : ' I hunted, as many days in every week as my 

 duties would permit, with John Froude, the well-known vicar 

 of Knowstone, with whom I was then on very intimate terms. 

 His hounds were something out of the common, bred from the 

 old staghounds, light in their colour, and sharp as needles ; 

 plenty of tongue, but would drive like furies. I have never 

 seen a better or more killing pack in all my long life. He 

 couldn't bear to see a hound put his nose to the ground and 

 " twiddle his tail." " Hang the brute ! " he would say to the 

 owner of the hound, " and get those that can wind their 



