THE WORKING PACK. 57 



daring. To aid these " poor things " were six or 

 seven French hounds, crippled in limb, stinted in 

 action, without power, speed, or endurance, and who, 

 to the disqualifications of frame, numbered in their 

 dishonest but sagacious minds every single fault for 

 which the English huntsman condemns a hound to 

 death, as not only useless in all successful sport, but 

 as the source of all possible faults in the pack that 

 hunts with him. To these add " Windsor," the 

 hound " down of two toes before," and, who, there- 

 fore, was disqualified from speed, and Saxon and a 

 few able young foxhounds such as I have before 

 enumerated, and the English huntsman will easily 

 conceive what chance there was in the severest and 

 best scenting copse-wood in the world of such hounds 

 keeping together, or of their hunting down anything 

 that at starting was not crippled by the gun or rifle. 

 I could not help casting a glance at the able active 

 figures of my friends by my side, and thinking that 

 such men were fully capable of making use to the 

 very utmost of far better means. 



With a sigh to myself that I should have further 

 errors to look at in the woods, I then told my friend 

 that had I seen his forest before I advised him to buy 

 some old steady foxhound bitches, I should have re- 

 commended nothing but the purchase of unentered 



