132 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



thick as haystacks, and yet Bartlett his old feeder declares 

 that Davis's hounds were bred much smaller and finer 

 than ours of to-day, and yet ran quite as hard. 



England's green pastures are grazed in security, 

 Thanks to the Saxon who spared us our flocks ; 



He who, reserving the sport for futurity, 

 Sweeping the wolves away left us the fox ; 



and the pastoral as against the woodland characteristics of 

 England have given us the foxhound and obliterated the 

 staghound. He is the result of the country he hunts in 

 and of the horses ridden to him, not of the animal he hunts. 

 M. de Ligniville declares in his book that the speed and 

 drive of the English hounds of his day were due to their 

 being ridden to by gentry mounted on barbs and Turks in 

 condition. 



Put him where you will, at home or abroad, there is 

 nothing like the foxhound. At times — as, for example, when 

 he should be getting out of the way of a carriage — he 

 certainly seems to think very little for himself. At other 

 times — as, for instance, when in defiance of horn-blowing and 

 remonstrance he flies on a heel line like a pigeon — he seems 

 to think too much. But given the most untoward and 

 unfamiliar conditions of climate, diet, management and 

 huntsman, a foxhound will always have a try. Anywhere 

 and everywhere, although he may not always persevere, a 

 well-bred foxhound cannot help trying. 



An illogical willingness to spend himself for the 

 smallest wages adapts him, moreover, particularly to stag- 

 hunting. Whyte Melville somewhere or other in one of his 

 pleasing and unpretentious excursions into ethics tells a 

 story of a foxhound which, as a puppy at walk, had once 

 caught a swallow with a broken wing. It ruined his 

 prospects in life. The prisoner of hope, ' cette eternelle 



