150 FOX-HOUNDS AND SETTERS 



pheasant-killing, has quite as much wear and tear to 

 undergo as a fox-hound. I will take the dog above 

 quoted as an example, who commences beating his ground 

 about ten o'clock in the morning, and does not leave off 

 working until three or four o'clock in the afternoon. 

 The setter begins ranging at once, with about half speed, 

 which is continued with little intermission (save when his 

 master is firing and loading) during the day. 



Now let us see how it fares with the fox-hound in his 

 day's work. The fashionable hour of meeting now-a-days 

 is about eleven o'clock. Say a fox is unkennelled in half 

 an hour, and you have twenty or thirty minutes' burst, 

 best pace, with a good finish — short, sharp, and decisive. 

 A fox-hound in good wind and condition is little the worse 

 for such a spurt as this. Allow, then, an hour for coffee- 

 housing, and finding another fox ; this brings you to past 

 one o'clock. Say another hunting run of an hour and 

 forty minutes, and you have had sport sufficient to satisfy 

 any reasonable man for one day. The fox-hound has been 

 going partly at full, and partly at half speed, with an 

 hour's interruption, for about two hours and a half, and 

 then returns home ; and this is a day's sport far above 

 the average, taking the season throughout, with any pack 

 of fox-hounds, and taking into account blank and bad 

 scenting days. But whether the scent be good or bad, 

 game scarce or plentiful, the setter is continually on the 

 gallop for four hours, at the lowest computation, and 

 being employed to beat covert also, has no exemption 

 from briars or black-thorn. 



