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all other places "the Irish Red Setter," but in Ireland called the "English Spaniel." How the breed has been kept so pure I have not information to enable me to state-one can only suppose by originally breeding in and in. That it is of English origin, and of the old setter kind, there is no doubt: but whether it has changed, like the Cromwellian setters, its original habits and attributes, and under the influence of the mercurial air of Shamrockshire lost some of its original steadiness and docility, I shall leave some abler casuist to determine. As it now exists, however, I cannot imagine a more unlikely dog for the net: it is the very fox-hound of the species; a capital grouse dog where there is plenty of work and game; but of such indomitable pluck, that it never could, in my poor opinion, have been sufficiently tamed to endure the cumbrous and tempertrying operation of the net.

Mr. Johnson, in his Directory, imagines that the nearest to the old English breed, or rather the least crossed, are to be found in Scotland, and mentions a brown dog which he got in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. I am somewhat inclined to the same opinion, as I know more than one place in this county where there are dogs much resembling our ideas of them, and where they are very careful in crossing out as little as possible. In one I know they have bred in for these last fifteen or sixteen years. On this point of breeding in and in I shall hereafter have something to say.

Now I am aware that there is positively nothing new in all this; but though it be not, I may surely assume it to be even yet a fair subject for discussion. Your ta

lented contributor, GILBERT FoRESTER, says positively that the old English setter was the land spaniel; and Captain Brown, in his recent work on the Dog, decides the land spaniel to have been, with the bull dog and mastiff, indigenous to Great Britain (which I cannot agree to), and derives the origin of the setter from the pointer, which is absolutely impossible, as the pointer was not known until after the introduction of shooting flying, somewhere about the beginning of the last century. Now I humbly hold to my very different opinion on the grounds above stated. It may be said you make your stand upon an old obsolete work of no ascertained or acknowledged value. I do, and what may be conceived to be my weakest point, I hold to be the very reverse. Printing in those days was no joke, and they only printed what was deemed most curious, remarkable, and authentic. One of the very few works printed by "Winkin de Worde" was " Dame Juliana Berners's" work on Angling, which (if there were any such need) would shew in what esteem our predecessors held all field sports: and as they proceeded to originate and perfect the breed of setting dogs, and progressed gradually to what at last became a distinct variety, they deemed it, even then-and I am sure no real sportsman of this day will differ with them-worthy to be promulgated. Such was the "Old English Setter," and such he remained until the fowling piece superseded the net. What setters, so denominated, now are, I shall proceed to consider in another letter.

A QUARTOGENARIAN. April 4, 1832.

COMMENTS ON THE NEW SYSTEM OF FOX-HUNTING, &c. BY RINGWOOD.

HAVING spoken of sport in a particular countrySuffolk-and the men who conduct it, perhaps it may not be amiss to examine impartially the present system of foxhunting as generally adopted in most countries. It is allowed by all who have lived long enough to make comparisons, that a great change has taken place, but whether for better or worse is still a matter of opinion. Mine, from the experience I have had, leads me to declare, that good huntsmen in the present day, like the old favorites of the orchard, the nonpareils, are fast fading away, and that whilst all other arts and sciences have improved in the course of time, the art of Fox-hunting has retrograded. Horses are improved: hounds, they tell us, are improved: but they do not kill good foxes as they used to do, although the lastmentioned animals remain without any alteration. What can be the reason for so many bad scenting days, so many unfinished runs? Why, the bungling of man! Everything in the age we live in must be quick, and the dread of being thought slow has spoiled ten young huntsmen for one it ever made. Riding, not hunting, is now the only test of sport: those bastard races called Steeple Chases have infected the multitude; and when once its votaries are let loose upon a pack of hounds, good bye to the chances of good sport. We must, if we intend to go fast when opportunity offers, occasionally be satis

fied with going slow, and be content with hunting a fox to death when the scent will not allow us to course him. One fox killed by patience and perseverance with a middling scent, will do more for a pack of hounds than ten of your ten minutes bursts (even if they kill), which are so

much the admiration of the New School.

I will not allude to any one particular pack, but I will ask any unprejudiced sportsman if what I am about to state is not to be seen with the generality of fox-hounds nine days out of ten? A fox is found; the hounds shall get well away with him; there shall be a good working scent; and all shall go on well at the commencement: we now come to a difficulty; and what follows? Do they, as the old huntsman in Beckford says, " spread like a skyrocket?" do they dash over the fences and scour the adjacent field to recover the scent? No: but, just round the spot where they stop, they try for half a minute, and then stand still, look up in the huntsman's face, and wag their sterns. This is the signal for being quick; the whippersin stop those hounds that seem inclined to spread; the huntsman rams the spurs into his horse's sides, and with a halloo, dashes off for a cast; and if he hits it off, he's a wonderfully clever fellow! But what is the fruit of all this cleverness? why, that whenever the hounds over-run the scent, come upon a road, or meet with any untoward circumstance,

they immediately give up everything into the huntsman's hands, and he may put his nose to the ground if he like and make the best of it. Hounds, when brought to a lost scent, should be gammoned that they found it themselves; and although a huntsman when he does stir should stir quickly, he should do it quietly.

Again, in the present school of fox-hunting, how often do we see hounds, that look well at the covert side in the morning, tire in a long day in a woodland country, or seem inclined to stop at the end of a twenty minutes burst! And what is this owing to? Why, merely to the fashion able doctrine of making a dog, that Nature formed a carnivorous animal, live chiefly on vegetables. One man feeds on rice, another on Indian meal, and almost all reject a belly full of raw flesh. Now, was I a master of hounds, I would as soon my hunters should go without their corn, as my hounds without good sound horse-flesh-not stinking carrion, or the carcase of a horse or cow that had died in a ditch, but the flesh of a healthy animal slaughtered for the purpose. Having fed hounds for some seasons in days gone by, I can speak from experience; and I remember to have had a hound of so savage a temper in the kennel, that nothing could tame but keeping him entirely on meal, cabbage, and milk: in about one fortnight with this discipline down went the bristles. But the nasty raw flesh, say some of the nice men, spoils their noses. -Indeed! Pray what else does every animal that subsists by

hunting live upon but the warm life blood and the hot carcase of their victim? Ask a London dogfancier which he would back, if two dogs were matched to fight, the one to be fed on flesh, and the other on vegetable matter. Why it would be the Pye-street Cham pion to a Lady's poodle. Not less than two meals per week of the raw material, where hounds work hard, and plenty of it cooked every other day and mixed with their meal and cabbage, is, as far as I have experienced, the only way to preserve the courage and physical powers of the hound in their highest pitch. Again, almost every master of a provin cial pack attempts to do the thing à la Quorndon. If possible he obtains his drafts from head-quar ters, the long-sided light-limbed brutes which they reject, and expects them to fly across the small inclosures of ploughed land in his country at the same rate they do over the Leicestershire pastures: and all this from fear some fashionable young gentleman, just let loose from College, should report him "d-d slow." But this aping one's betters answers no better in hunting than in other daily avocations. The donkey who borrowed the lion's top-coat soon found out it did not fit him. Those are the fastest hounds that can get ten miles across a country after their game in the shortest time, and not those that can fly the quickest across two fields. One of the greatest secrets in a hunting establishment is to have horses and hounds suited to their country. RINGWOOD.

April 8, 1832.

(To be continued.)

BY-GONE SCENES; OR, DAYS OF HOG HUNTING.-No. VII.

SIR,

THE

HE day that Feridoon fell was a day remarkable for the number of hogs killed by our party, as well as for the sport they generally afforded. The hogs had sheltered themselves in a strong wall jungle surrounding the village of Tagpore; and so lofty was the grass that the elephants were completely hid from view as they forced slowly and with difficulty their ponderous way in a close line through the deep thickets. Matchlocks were incessantly ringing, crackers blazed, and the clang of rattles, mixed with the loud shouts of the human voice, resounded through the recesses of the jungle, and scared at earliest dawn the villages afar. The wild noise swelled in tumultuous murmurs over the distant and solitary plain, starting from their drowsy slumbers the herds of beauteous antelopes, who bounded away with alarm. Our horses were all on the field. The hogs broke singly, or at most in pairs, and the spears of the hunters were never used with better effect. One boar particularly exhibited a ferocity and boldness which may give a good idea of the animating nature of this chase; which, being attended with peculiar circumstances, I purpose to give the fullest account of.

thorn (dreadful to the horse and rider) brushwood scattered over the plain, with occasional patches of fine silky grass, stunted coundas, and some large fields of Tuwarre, or Indian corn, gemming in golden glory the rugged base of the bare and desolate granite rocks, which reared their black fantastic masses in every variety of shape, amidst the luxu rious cultivation which spread over the rich valley of Goligaum, rushing over its rocky bed, and sparkling in frothy freshness, indicative of its mountain birth. The Beemah, in the full torrents of its vigour, plunges into the deep valley, and slowly fights its sluggish course through the loamy soil, till, refreshed with its thousand auxiliary streamlets, it pours on, through the waving and gladsome fields of superabundant corn that crown its teeming banks through the widespreading plains of Shickrapore till it mingles its full tide of swift waters with the holy Kistnah. For the most part the ground in the hot season is very hard, with a pulverised dust on the surface, full of deep holes and wide cracks, and in some places interspersed with dried-up wells from four to eight and ten feet deep, mostly concealed by high grass, and very wide at the top from the loose earth having fallen in around.

Previously to the boar breaking from covert he charged the whole line of elephants, forcing the greater number to temporary flight*; but, alarmed at

The face of the country may be described as a level flat, extending for about two miles, encircled by a ridge of small granite mountains, intersected with deep defiles and rugged ravines, partially covered with the bauble *Putting the elephants to flight-than which nothing is more common. A boar frequently charges fresh in a thick jungle, and cuts at the legs of those animals, who be come alarmed and cannot often be brought to enter the place again,

length by the constant firing,
he stole slily away and skulked
into the noble plain at a slow
trot." Hold hard! hold hard!"
cried Hospitius." A gallant
one," said Idem, "with fair play
and an open field!"-"My spear
-my spear!" cried Cambius, as
sprung with a light bound on
his pawing horse." Off, off,
and away,
shouted Shawzada,
throwing up his arm with an ani-
mated gesture, and striking his
spurs into his gallant steed,
"hurra for the first spear!"

he

The boar fiercely eyed his pursuers askance, and then burst over the extended fields in the confidence of unimpaired speed, each hunter stretching to overtake him ere he should ascend the rugged mountain path towards which he had shaped his flight.

all obstacles, and fearless of all dangers, ambitious only of the honour of delivering the first ef fectual spear. He had already fixed himself close in his saddle, with his ready arm raised, and his glittering weapon brandished high, meditating the fame-conferring wound, when his noble horse, as though struck by the enchanter's wand, sprung suddenly and energetically to clear a deep well, which he had been pressed upon in his headlong course, and, falling full upon his chest against the opposing bank, stumbled back with swimming eye and quivering feet into the deceitful pitfall, groaned heavily, and expired. His rider, more fortunate, rolled, immaterially injured, over the dusty field. Idem, following, came up with the boar along a pathway, where he felt assured of carrying off the prize, when the furious animal stopped short in mid career, and with appalling strength rushed unscathed under the spear of Idem, and completely hamstrung his gallant horse, who sank slowly on the ground, while his master in bitter rage flung far away the erring spear that had disappointed his hopes.

It is not to be supposed that there are any, save those who have been taught by that able and unerring master-Experience-who would be induced to admit the remarkable swiftness of the wild boar, rushing away for his strong hold; but the best Arab horses with the best workmen on them, not slow in a burst of speed, have often failed to overtake him in first and rapid flight: but the farther you go the surer you may be. With the sharp spear, the fair horse, the quick eye, and the judgment, even the far-famed erymanthian, or the boar of Meleager, must have fallen an easy victim before some of our Eastern riders. Push him along, and then a short pull at your horse, and at him again, and the mighty brute soon becomes nerveless before the skill of his enemy. "Not so," thought Shawzada, pressing on at a furious pace, mindless of VOL. V.-SECOND SERIES.-No. 25.

The chase now devolved on Hospitius and Cambius, the former of whom, extending his long lance, threatened the boar with instant death if he attempted to ascend the mountain path; while Cambius, confident in the use of the light and aspen spear, which "at distance flung will wound, or in his rapid charge" transfix the boar, gallopped on elate with the certainty of bearing off the palm; but, dashing through the bed of a rivulet, his horse became engulphed up to his saddle-girth in C

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