ERRORS OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM. 101 



back their hounds, the chase will die of inanition, and 

 expire of itself. 



When M. d'Anchald came over to England and 

 asked my advice as to how he should establish a pack 

 by breeding, I advised him to buy some of our best 

 old foxhound bitches, who, being deemed too slow to 

 run up, had been bred from by their owners — the 

 best guarantee for their worth — but who were of an 

 age yet to have a litter or two of puppies. I little 

 thought that such steady slow old creatures as these 

 would be called upon to form the mainstay of the 

 hunting hounds. The very expectation is ridiculous. 

 A hound too old to catch the animal she has hunted 

 all her life, and which she has been able to kill and 

 triumph over, could not be expected to take zealously 

 to the chase of a creature that could kill her; so, 

 what with cunning old roi>;uish French hounds and 

 worn-out English ones, hounds with full stomachs, 

 and hounds like herrings, with no inside at all, my 

 English brethren will guess the fix in which we were, 

 and this in such a woodland. 



The idle horn-blower, called a huntsman, who sat 

 on a heap of stones and smoked a pipe while his 

 masters and their hounds were running, did not remain 

 at the chateau long. One day he came into the 

 kennel and discovered the old boiler feeding the 



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