142 By Stream and Sea, 



fallow. You seldom require heavy galloping with these 

 harriers. Tact serves better than speed. 



It is impossible to say when and where the hare will 

 double, but double assuredly she will. Some members of 

 the party appear to be quietly cantering off the field, away 

 from, instead of after, the quarry, and they are most likely 

 to be well in the running when the fly-away has turned and 

 twisted according to her nature. She is now making for the 

 up-country, and we may use the spurs after all for a brief 

 spell, while the hare dashes along the ridge, descends a 

 valley of soft rich pasture, and, skirting the rearguard of a 

 flock of Southdowns, seeks refuge in the friendly swedes. 

 By what process does she know that here, more than any- 

 where else in this north-easterly wind, will the scent be in 

 all probability destroyed? For an hour she pursues this 

 policy. Hunted in the fallow, she escapes to the rapefields. 



Note how splendidly the harriers work. They never lose 

 their heads. Baffled many a time, they yet plod on with 

 infinite patience, requiring scarcely a word of direction. 

 Other hounds charge forward in a mad career; the true- 

 bred harrier keeps himself, as it were, strictly in hand, 

 meeting the cunning of the game with a corresponding 

 artfulness and wiliness of his own. Perhaps it is because 

 the frequent pauses on high ground, and the circles in 

 which the pack manoeuvre, afford us unusual opportunities 

 of observation ; but it does seem that no class of hunting- 

 dog so largely claims our admiration for persevering and 

 unobtrusive intelligence as a well-trained pack of beagles or 

 harriers. 



And what an astonishing distance you may travel in these 

 alternate gallops, trots, and pauses ! Now you are away 

 amongst the springy turf, dark clumps of gorse, and iron- 

 grey weather of the Downs, with the murmur of the distant 



