Captain Standish (West Hambledon) remarks that distemper varies in intensity from year to year. The diaries kept by his father during his mastership of the Hursley, 1862–69, and the New Forest Hounds, 1869–74, show that he sustained heavy losses: and this despite the fact that in those days the absence of motor-cars and less rigorous game preserving made it possible to give hounds at walk greater liberty.
The Earl of Stradbroke (Henham Harriers) writes:
“After enjoying freedom from distemper for several years, it broke out last November, having been introduced by a retriever. The disease attacked the older hounds, none of the younger ones being affected; possibly the latter may have had distemper while at walk. One hound died. The disease seemed to be in the head and lungs. The treatment I adopted was to give a dose of castor oil directly a hound showed any sign of being amiss, and then Spratt’s Distemper Pills, feeding on milk or gravy, and avoiding all solid food for some days. Several of the hounds were very ill, the strongest being the most severely affected, but, with the one exception, they all pulled round, and none of them seem any the worse now, though it took them some weeks to recover condition.”
Mr. Hubert M. Wilson (Cheshire) thinks that his small losses of the spring of 1905 were rather a matter of good fortune than anything else. But he says: “I certainly had the young hounds put in couples as soon as they came in from quarters, and regularly exercised instead of being turned loose into the kennel. I also built a new kennel of wood, with a very good cinder yard, where they seemed to do very much better than in former years. These are all the precautions that occur to me at the moment that were taken. But I cannot help thinking that the hounds that are in-bred to certain strains are, if not liable to distemper, certainly less able to resist it.”
In answer to a further query, Mr. Wilson says that his last remark was meant to apply to in-breeding to any strain too much, and not to any particular strain of blood.
Some interesting and suggestive points are raised in the foregoing letters; as these indicate the necessity for further enquiry, and as space forbids any adequate review in the present number of the information kindly furnished by our correspondents, we propose to return to the subject in a future issue.
Recollections of Seventy-five Years’ Sport.
I.
I saw a good deal of sport with the Pytchley and Quorn and also with Mr. Tailby’s hounds in old days. I remember one season, when I was staying with Mr. Angerstein at Kelmarsh, the Pytchley had been passing through a phase of indifferent sport, not having killed a fox for several days. On one of these days, after dinner, there was much talk on the subject, and some abuse of the huntsman, Charles Payne, and the hounds; I had a high opinion of both, and defended them, saying that the fault lay not with them, but with the Northamptonshire squires and the field. Mr. Vyse thereupon said he should like to know what I should do were I the master. I told him I would not put meat in my mouth until my hounds had been fed upon fox.
The reply brought down a good deal of chaff upon me. Next day, as it happened, we had a good run with an afternoon fox. After passing Yelverton Gorse, I felt sure that the main earth on the Hemploe was his point, and determined to give hounds a helping hand if it could be done; so, riding straight across the vale to the Hemploe, I reached the main earth barely two minutes before the hunted fox arrived, and turned him away. Hounds were coming steadily along, but half-way up the hill several foxes were afoot, and the pack divided, only five hounds sticking to the line of the hunted fox. Payne blew his horn to get them together, and the second whipper-in, attempting to stop the five, I told him they would kill their fox if he left them alone.