I30 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



off the ground, and only one deer was killed by them in 

 Dorsetshire. Even in the same field they never get a view, 

 so all the deer have been saved without difficulty.' As no 

 man ever hated his own flesh, we may assume that Mr. 

 Roden is writing sympathetically of the St. Huberts ; but 

 it is clear that they are not adapted by their ' ingenium ' to 

 hunt in a pack, admirable as individuals may be on the line 

 of a page-boy or a turkey. One of the many lovely and 

 pleasant things about a pack of foxhounds is an almost over- 

 alertness to each other's possibilities. At the shyest sugges- 

 tion of a note, five out of six hounds fly to the scene of the 

 discovery, bent upon confirming and wresting it from the 

 discoverer. In a sense, a foxhound is apt to prefer his 

 neighbour to himself — often too much so, indeed, in drawing. 

 The bloodhound looks upon his neighbour either as a 

 nuisance or a superfluity. 



So much, then, for the two main varieties of the authentic 

 staghound as known to more or less contemporary history. 

 That is to say, first, the lemon pye, magpye, and badger pye, 

 like George III.'s hounds which Colonel Thornton took 

 to France, and like the Epping Forest hounds which went 

 to North Devon ; and, secondly, the black and tan St. 

 Huberts or Talbots of Mr. Nevill and Lord Wolverton. 

 It is as well, both for their own sakes and for that of 

 their admirers, that they have either gone abroad or dis- 

 appeared. They would have been sadly ridden over in these 

 days, when riding is the avowed principle of so much hunt- 

 ing, and especially of stag-hunting. Whatever their qualities 

 may have been of nose and patience, it is certain that the 

 value of these was largely modified by characteristics requir- 

 ing exceptional conditions, which ' these mixed times,' as 

 'Nimrod' called the democratic expansion of hunting even 

 in his day, can no longer be expected to afford. 



And now I have done with ancient history and tradition, 



