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large and lofty lodging rooms. Ground damp must be prevented. 

 Water should he carefully looked to, for some sorts engender disease 

 in hounds, and all sorts will cause rheumatism if conveyed any distance 

 through leaden pipes. The flags must be of a quick-drying description. 



I leave for the last the most important item of all — ventilation. 

 That should be provided for upon the recognised principle of letting 

 in the fresh air from the bottom, and the foul escape at the top. In 

 doing so every precaution must be taken against draughts from the 

 influx, while the outlet should be close up to the ceiling or to the 

 ridge, according as the lodging rooms be ceiled or open to the roof. 



Unless hounds are housed in pure air, manifestly their sense of smell 

 mtist get impaired, with a result obvious to everyone. Men, except 

 those grossly ignorant, must know what I say is correct with regard 

 to the ventilation of kennels, but the fact remains that seldom is the 

 principle carried out. 



If kennels be contrived on the principle I have named, the get-up 

 may be plain and unpretending ; but if they are not, all the painting 

 and plastering in England won't make them healthy. 



I have been shown over kennels the lodging-houses of which had 

 the walls covered with porcelain and the floors with tiling equal to 

 marble, but the stench from want of ventilation was unbearable. In 

 one place — and very swell, too — the only means for letting in the 

 fresh air and out the foul was through one great hole in the wall 

 bored halfway hetiveen the floor and the ceiling, and the feeder tcld 

 me that in cold weather he stuffed it up with a wisp of straw ! 



Except the illness he suffered from which occasioned his giving up the 

 Curraghmore Hounds, Briscoe enjoyed singularly good health until just 

 a few months before his death. 



As he was starting to attend the Curraghmore Hunt Steeplechases 

 in the spring of 1881 he was seized with a heavy cold. This he could 

 not get rid of, and he passed into rapid consumption, which carried him 

 off at Tinvane on the Tth of October following, when he had just com- 

 pleted his seventy-second year. As may be supposed his funeral was 

 largely attended by all classes. The cortege of cars and carriages 

 extended in unbroken line for over a mile, while many followed on foot 

 and on horseback. It was attended numerously by farmers, a fact 

 which testified emphatically to Briscoe's popularity, for he died at a 

 time when the peasant population of the country was in a state of 

 agitation against the gentry, perhaps greater than at any other period 

 of that troublous era. Albeit hundreds of the peasantry who desired 

 to attend the funeral, were deterred by reason of their fear of the Land 

 League ! 



By a fctrange and melancholy coincidence, this fine old Irish sports- 

 man died exactly on the day following that upon which the Curraghmore 

 hounds were stopped hunting in Newtown Wood, about four miles 

 from Tinvane, by the villainous mob, as minutely described in the 

 Curraghmore chapter. 



