202 A MONTH IN THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



On the next day, Friday, I killed partridge and 

 landrail, and on the Saturday, with horror at the 

 idea, shrunk from accompanying my younger 

 friends, who proposed to take out ray splendid 

 bloodhound-bitch Malwood, whom I had brought 

 with me and sold to M. d'Anchald, for the pur- 

 pose of exercising her, and entering her at hare. As 

 yet she had never been entered to a scent of any 

 sort or description. All my assertions that they 

 would spoil the bitch were of no avail ; nothing could 

 induce them to believe that unsteadiness, inculcated 

 by entry at many scents, would tend to make her 

 not trustworthy, and the more so as they intended 

 her for a limier. They were resolved to maintain 

 their essentially French ideas and misconceptions as 

 to hounds, and away they went to a place where 

 they said they should only find the lesser game. 



Out of curiosity, I took the trouble to ascertain 

 the hounds they were to take with them to teach 

 this splendid young hound to hunt, and to my con- 

 tinued wonder they took the little babbling harrier, 

 and one or two of the old powerless, false, and 

 skirting cripples, and in such company Malwood was 

 put to begin her hunting life. As usual, my friends 

 having settled the fact in their own minds that they 

 were to find nothing but a hare, or at most a roe- 



