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tion they had received at the commencement of their hunting career, will not always make the best boar-hounds. How frequently have I seen some of those fine, steady-looking old hounds, when the body of the pack had been running hard in cover, wandering about the rides. as if they were lost, and listening to hear if they could catch the merest echo of a note upon which they could rely, and fly at once to the cry of the rest as they had been accustomed to do; and yet in half an hour you might see these very hounds, collected in little lots of three or four couples, scouring away on the line of a fox, as if that was what they purposely came out for, and as if they really intended to have him without any denial, if he would only keep above ground for forty minutes. I made acquaintance with several of these unfortunate exiles, and used to talk a little English dog language to them sometimes, by way of polite encouragement, which they seemed, by their always greeting me, greatly to prefer to the bawling and unintelligible" T-o-o-s, t-o-o-s, t-o-o-s," of the piqueurs, who in that most disagreeable manner used at times to halloo to their hounds. They seemed to say, as they looked up in my face and whined, "Oh! master, we don't like this French hunting at all; what the devil is it these fellows want us to hunt? I can't bear the sight of that great savage-looking pig; it's what we were always forbidden even to sniff at, as we trotted along the road to cover, in England: the heavy thong of Jack, the whipper-in, has so indelibly imprinted it upon our memory, for only having once laid hold of an old sow by the ear, one fine summer's morning, when we were jogging along in couples at exercise, that we shall never be able to bear the sight of a boar for the rest of our lives." The sort of hound to hunt the wild boar au forcé, in a large forest, is one that has plenty of tongue, and plenty of courage. As to the minor vices which would be justly considered unpardonable in a pack of foxhounds in England, they are not of so much consequence; of course I do not mean to argue that a decided rank skirter, or a devil that would throw his lying tongue just when he felt inclined to sing, even in his couples, would do as well for the purpose as one that was tolerably quiet, and not so insatiably fond of a scent as to prefer hunting the pack full cry, at a quarter of a mile in the rear, to running up and taking a more useful part in the chase. But I beg to observe, that there are plenty of hounds, hardly worth a rope to hang them when belonging to many of the English packs, that would make admirable boar-hounds; in fact, in my humble opinion, a man would be a very unwise person to give more than a mere draft price for any hounds to put to work of that description, when, as soon as they were introduced to their new companions, the evil communications would, without fail, corrupt their good manners; to say nothing of the great probability of half of them being ripped open by the boars by the time that the hunting season came to a finish.

The description of hound the Count requested me to select for him was, without doubt, the most difficult to procure; they were to be all two and three years old, if I could get them-in fact, fresh sound hounds, and none of that year's entry; moreover, they were to be all dog-hounds, if possible, and of course to be bought at as low a figure as I could manage to buy them. When I went to England, at the end of September, I wrote to all the huntsmen I thought likely to have

any; but none could I get promised till cub-hunting was over; I knew I should have some difficulty to find them so early; but as there are continually chances falling, as soon as cub-hunting begins, of a hound or two being condemned, I tried to pick them up one or two at a time, and not wait for the autumn draft, as the hounds were wanted to go to work directly. At last, as luck would have it, I stumbled on the very lot I wanted-about ten couples, all dog-hounds, and all one and two season hunters, undeniable blood, in fact well-bred drafts; they had worked together, and to the eye of the ordinary run of sportsmen remarkably good-looking and level-just the very thing. I shipped them off, and soon after received a letter from their new master, saying that he was more than delighted, and that they were the admiration of all the chasseurs who had seen them; moreover, that he had taken them out hunting, and tried them, and that they performed a merveille; altogether I could not have done his commission more perfectly to his satisfaction. And long may he live to wear the pack out he now amuses himself with, and send to England for some more; for he is a real enthusiast in the chase, and an excellent fellow in every other respect.

When I mentioned above that the different behaviour evinced by foxhounds, when put to work at hunting boars, &c., in France, might be attributed to the entire and sudden change in their treatment and handling when in chase, I forgot to give, as one of the causes, the sudden change of their names to appellatives the most inharmonious, at any rate to the ear of an English sportsman, if they even should ever be so uttered and pronounced so as to fall agreeably upon the tympanum of an English foxhound. Thus, when a draft of hounds arrives at some remote kennel, on the other side of the water, one of the first things to be done is to change the names of the whole pack. Poor old Rallywood undergoes the baptismal rite, and receives, in exchange of his truly sporting name, a new one of more approved gentility, Castilio; Victory is metamorphosed, more speedily than Ovid could himself have done it, into Finette; Vanguard is obliged to forget his rank, and answer to the piqueur's call of Cerf-volant! Now all this seemingly absurd nonsense is enough to disgust hounds, for how the devil can they understand French? much less when uttered with quite a different tone and emphasis to what they have been used to? And I must again repeat it, that what with having to learn to answer to new names—and such names with having also to learn an entirely new lingo, and, above all, whether the poor devils have naturally a talent for music or not, they are expected to acquire a sufficient quantity of it, to be able to distinguish between the airs of "Le Sanglier," "Le Loup," "Le Chevreuil," Le Change," and a host of others equally enlivening, or be immediately put down as "a regular left-handed lot," that wont answer nor turn to the voice of the head piqueur : I say, with all these obstacles to the tranquillity of their dispositions, it is no wonder that a good many of them lose what little good principle they may have before been endowed with, together with all patience, and pitch into the first animal that may cross their path, on a fine hunting morning, let it be a wolf, a roebuck, a fox, or even Monsieur le Sanglier himself.

In looking into the kennel appropriated to the keeping of a French pack of hounds, a far different place will present itself to the inspection

of the English sportsman to anything of the same nature to which he may have been accustomed in his own country. The make-shift tone pervading the whole department would necessarily strike the eye of the least experienced. The bad smells, occasioned by the filthy system of not paving the yards, and, in nearly every instance that I have seen, even the lodging-rooms, prevents the possibility of washing out the building. There are no separate yards for feeding or drafting; the hounds are fed during all weathers in the open air; and if there are any little lodging rooms for bitches, at a certain season, or for lame hounds, it is generally contrived to have them arranged in some little back passage, where neither the air nor the light of Heaven can ever be allowed to shed its beneficial influence. The benches generally are narrow beds, running entirely round the room; in some instances I have seen the benches divided into a kind of stalls, sufficiently large to allow of one hound to repose in each. This system has been advocated as a means to prevent fighting; but why need they fight, where a remedy is so easily at hand, by means of a bell and wire conducting to the feeder's room? Moreover, hounds lying together do much better; they learn to become better acquainted with each other; they can roll and stretch their limbs more easily, to say nothing of the additional warmth derived from crowding together in chilly weather: only look at the best managed packs of hounds in England, when in their kennels at rest, and I need not say another word on that subject. The doorways in French kennels are never half wide enough to allow the hounds room to come in and out, without endangering their shoulders by striking against them; and you seldom see the trough of clean water afforded them to lap when thirsty. The boiling house, when there is one, usually contains, besides a copper, an oven for the purpose of baking the hounds' bread-for the French sportsmen are not in the habit of thicking up puddings, as we do, to mix as feed for their hounds-and, like many others of the French cuisines, is never very remarkable for its cleanliness. When I paid a visit to that most monarchical of buildings, the stables at Chantilly, some years ago, of course I did not forget to ask my conductor to be kind enough to allow me to see the old kennel, where Louis XV. formerly kept his meute de chiens courrans. Although the kennel had been used at two subsequent periods, by two different and renowned chasseurs, viz., Charles X., and the late deeply and justly lamented Duke of Orleans, the single square apartment (for it really was no more) was exactly in the same state as it was at the period when it was first built, above one hundred years ago. Although exceedingly substantial and well-arranged, as far as comfort and cleanliness went, it wanted one of the chief attributes to a good kennel; it was, in fact, a square room, or hall, with no other air to ventilate it than what might enter through the windows, just the same as a stable. In one corner was a kind of cage, made of iron bars, and covered with a strong wire netting, capable of containing ten or twelve couples of hounds this place was destined for those of the pack that were so unfortunate as to be wounded by the boar or stag in the chase, a circumstance but too frequent in the hunting of those animals in their natural state. The oven was enormous, but not too large, when, if we recollect right, the king kept about an hundred couple of hounds, divided into packs suited to every description of venerie. A small fountain, in ex

cellent taste and workmanship of stone, on the left of the door as you entered, supplied the water for the hounds to lap, and for washing out the building.

It need hardly be mentioned here how great a consideration the feeding and conditioning of a pack of hounds has always been with English sportsmen; on the other side the little strip of salt water which divides the two most enlightened countries in the world, everything connected with the training of the dog seems to be at utter variance with the purpose intended. Of breaking hounds we will speak hereafter, and confine ourselves for the present to a few remarks upon the food, both as to quality and quantity, consumed by a pack kept in a regular kennel; the two or three chiens courrans, the property of the minor fry of chasseurs, who leave them to get their living" on the loose," being beneath our notice. In the first place, I must mention to the reader, that, with the exception of Brittany, it is impossible to obtain oatmeal in any part of France; that description of flour is never made, and even by a great majority of Frenchmen, from whom I made some enquiries upon the subject, has never been heard of. An English trainer of race-horses even informed me that oatmeal could not be procured, in ever such small quantities, to make gruel when required for the horses in training, and that they were obliged invariably to use, as the only substitute that could be procured, common barley meal. After much experience it has been satisfactorily proved that barley-flour is about the most heating thing that a dog can eat, especially if used alone, and unmixed with any other meal, or with some boiled vegetable substance to counteract its excessive inflammatory and astringent properties. Yet a French piqueur, or even the owner of a meute, will tell you that barley is the only grain admissible as food for hounds, and as one recommendation they assert its warming attributes, which they say gives the hounds strength in the chase, parce qu'il est si échauffant. I can only say I never saw a pack of French hounds in my life that had not some mangy ones amongst them. The preparation of the barleymeal is, perhaps, the only part of it which can recommend it; it is baked in large loaves, instead of being boiled-a system which my experience has convinced me, and which I once mentioned before, is far preferable to the ordinary custom of making puddings for hounds according to the old regime. The broth used by the French feeders is usually made of graves, some of them use horse-flesh when they can get it for nothing; but then it is never nicely mixed up as ours is, but given in great, hard, indigestible lumps; not a very good thing for their wind, I should imagine. Flesh for feeding dogs is not held in the same estimation as in England, and that may, in some degree, account for the great number of dead horses and cows, which have died from accident or from being worn out, being allowed to remain putrefying in the fields, or rather, I should say the open country, or to feed the enormous flocks of carrion crows and magpics, which greet the traveller in every direction, or to satisfy the hunger of the midnight wolf, or prowling fox of the forest. Vegetables are of too costly a nature, cheap as they are in France, to allow the pack a few to be boiled and mixed in their food, even during the summer months. At feeding time the hounds are let in, or rather out, "helter skelter," "pell mell,' to feed at the trough, which is always in the open air, in the only court belonging to the kennel. I never yet met

with a piqueur who could draw his hounds through the kennel doorway, in the workman-like manner that an English huntsman does, either at feeding time, or even if he wished to draw out any particular hound: if he wants him, he must go and fetch him; and out he comes, dragged by the nape of his neck, screaming ten-thousand murders. Whoever has had the opportunity of looking over a pack of French hounds, would, without doubt, be as much surprised at the uneven state of their condition, or rather at their entire want of it, as he would be at the extraordinary difference of the size and height of this mixture of giants and pigmies. Some, for instance, even at the rendezvous-for we must not call it the cover-side in France-look as if they were just fed to repletion, whilst others to all appearance are half starved, and as gaunt as wolves -the evident effects of the "catch as catch can" system of feeding. With regard to the regular exercise of hounds in France, I have but a very few words to say upon that most important question. From the enquiries I have frequently made from the piqueurs and valets de chiens, I found that they do "go to exercise," but not regularly and at stated times, as ours do-in fact, when they have either time or inclination to take them un petit tour for an hour or so; you may then guess that that is not very often; and that accounts in a great measure for the bad wind the pack are always in, excepting upon the occasion of three or four hunting-days falling close together, when there is an extra call upon their energies. During summer, and non-hunting periods, the hounds are much left to themselves in their kennel, to contract loaded systems, and a general disarrangement of their corporeal powers and animal dispositions. Moreover, with the neglect of their regular exercise, their education, either as young hounds or as new introductions to the meute, is a thing unheard of in these degenerate days of French hunting. It is very seldom indeed that a French huntsman or piqueur ever scolds his hounds, much less corrects them with the lash for the most flagrant vices. As I observed before, these hounds are totally unbroken, and they have no deer parks nor hare preserves, to walk them about in, as in England.

(To be continued.)

A FEW WORDS ON SNIPE SHOOTING.

BY A SPORTSMAN,

Snipe-shooting, where the birds are plentiful, is an excellent diversion; and the most favourable weather for this most sportsmanlike recreation is not adapted to delicate, or what may be termed drawing-room sportsmen. It requires, if to be done well, to be in good health, and to have a perfect contempt of all sorts of weather, and of all sorts of wet, both from above and below. Snipes lie better-at least, I have found them in dark, drizzly days, with a moderate amount of wind, ground of course not too wet, and the second or third day after a heavy fall of rain, or, as we in the far north term it, a flood;" when, on the

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