later on account of the hounds resting more quietly during the night; but if they are to be taken out to exercise by day break as they ought to be, three or four o'clock in the afternoon is quite late enough for the feeding hour, as they have then time to digest their food before the next day. When the puppies first come up from their quarters, they should be fed two or three times a day, unless they are very high in flesh and likely to grow too large for the pack, but as they advance in their education and condition, and the effects of the distemper begin to wear off, they should be taught to feed only once in the day. A dog is almost a carnivorous animal, and as he is like all animals of that description, enabled by nature to go many hours without food, so also is his stomach formed to contain at one meal sufficient for at least one day's digestion, without feeling his strength and vigour impaired in the same degree as the horse would, or any other graminivorous beast. Although dogs are, undoubtedly speaking, naturally carnivorous, we sometimes meet with accounts of their living in nearly a natural state on fish and even vegetables; in Siberia their chief food consists of fish, and we may also read, that, in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, dogs are bred-up on vegetables, and would not eat the flesh, when offered them by our circumnavigators. Hounds should never be allowed to eat to satiety; Sir B. Graham who at one time, himself performed the office of feeder, and whose authority on matters relating to feeding and kennel management was never doubted for a moment, considered it as most injurious to condition, to allow them to fill themselves at the trough. It is the custom of some huntsmen during the hunting season to draw those hounds which look thin, and give them some meat in the afternoon; I must confess it is a system I do not admire, a hound fed at three or four o'clock in an afternoon is totally unfit to run a burst at eleven o'clock the next morning; it is a much better plan to make such as will not feed one day, wait till the next, by that means they soon learn to feed at a proper hour as they ought to do; when animals reject their food, (depend upon it,) there is a good reason for it, and nothing is so good for the stomach when disordered, as a little fasting; such was the system pursued by the great Napoleon, who preferred it to taking medicine when unwell. When hounds whose constitutions are delicate become a little below the mark, the better plan is to let them miss one day's hunting, by that means they will gain more vigour, than by overloading their stomachs with food which will do them more good when it is on their backs than it will when it is inside their ribs. Mr. Warde was a great advocate for a little afternoon feeding; and when inspecting the pack for the following day's work, would frequently draw such as he considered too fast for the rest at three o'clock and give them what he

termed " stopping balls," composed of oatmeal and barley-flour mixed with flesh and rolled up; but Berkshire was a slow and cold scenting country, and the pace was not expected to be quite so good as it is upon grass. His huntsman William Neverd was quite of a different opinion on the subject, and told me he thought they would have done much better if his master had given the others some "quicksilver balls" instead. In looking over hounds some four or five hours after they have been fed, it is impossible to form a correct judgment of the quantity of food they may have eaten, or what their appearance and condition may be at ten o'clock the next morning; some digest much quicker than others do; Rallywood whose sides appear as if he were only just fed, at two o'clock, may have not eaten any more than Vanquisher who looks at that hour almost fit to run a burst, yet by the cover side the next morning they will both look as "level as dice," and the food of both of them will be upon their backs instead of inside their bellies which it would have been had they been fed at three or four o'clock in the afternoon of the day before. Some, whose digestion is weak, void their food nearly in the same state as they swallow it, and many, from the same cause, are constantly in the habit of throwing part of their meat off immediately after feeding; it is quite curious to see how such hounds are continually watched by the others, to whom they are as well known as the pieman would be, near the gates of a school; for what purpose I leave my readers to guess. When hounds loose their appetites and when they are in the habit of throwing off part of their meat immediately after feeding, it is a certain sign that the digestive organs are impaired; this frequently happens to puppies, when recovering from the effects of the distemper, and even the older ones whose constitutions are none of the strongest, are at times afflicted with dyspepsia; it arises generally from too great an acidity in the contents of the stomach, to which all animals whose aliment is mixed with vegetable matter, are more or less liable. This tendency in the stomach to produce acid may be obviated by avoiding acescent aliments, and substituting animal food, which is not so likely to excite undue fermentation; this is evident, by turning those hounds of the kennel, which have become sickly and dyspeptic, to feed on raw flesh, when they almost invariably in avery few days, become sleek and fat. This plan, however, if for a long time, or very frequently pursued, is not the most likely means of either getting them into condition, or keeping them so, even if they were in such condition, as it cannot be long continued without corrupting the state of their blood; and as vegetable food cannot be entirely dispensed with, the excess of the acescency may be in a great measure avoided, by mixing in each meal a small portion of common chalk, and administering to the

hounds thus affected, to each a pill, containing eight grains of calomel and thirty of jalap on every third morning for five or six mornings, and feeding them twice a-day as long as they are taking the pills; if it is in the summer, and the weather is fine, they may go to moderate exercise with the rest. Some huntsmen are in the habit of using common reddle mixed up in the food once a week during the summer months. I once asked Wm. Boxall, who succeeded J. Wood in the office of huntsman to the Warwickshire pack, why he used it, but the only intelligence I could gain was that "it was a rare thing for the blood." Now reddle is nothing more nor less than red chalk, which is an absorbent earth, and I could never discover any peculiar properties in it which are not found in the common white chalk, excepting its difference in colour. Other hounds which have the same symptoms as those described above, are also, at times, affected with purging, which arises from the same causes, and is part and parcel of the same complaint; and until a more healthy action of the stomach is produced, we must, in vain, look for an amendment in either the appetite or secretions. From an undue fermentation and the digestion becoming morbid, an acid and phlegm-like accumulation takes place on the coats of the stomach; and as Dr. Whytt has justly observed, that when much phlegm is collected in the stomach and intestines, their nerves are rendered less sensible of the stimulus of the aliments, their absorbent vessels are partly obstructed, and the gastric and intestinal lymph is more sparingly secreted, or at least becomes more viscid. This observation was made with regard to the human frame, but it is well known that the organic structure in the stomach of dogs, differs but little from that of human beings, both being omnivorous animals, many diseases being common to both, and having almost the same symptoms in each, for instance, the jaundice, or yellows, inflammation of the bowels, and many others. Iron or copper introduced into the stomachs of those which are dyspeptic and weak in their digestions very frequently increases the appetite and vigour of the circulation. I have tried occasionally one grain and a-half of blue vitriol pulverised, and rolled up in a pill, and given every morning for a week or ten days, with great success. But after all, the grand secret is, never to allow any hound to eat at one time to satiety.

WILLOWDALE HALL FISHING CODE.

BY CHARLES WILLOWDALE.

Continued.

DRAGGING.

Ix dragging for tench your nets can hardly be too heavily leaded.
Never take too long a draught.

Let there be two or three trammels placed between the stop-net and the drag—which trammels are to be worked by two or three in a boat, by continually sitting and taking them in every twenty yards. All the best fish will be taken in the trammels, if they are skilfully used. To drag with a stop net alone is to defraud yourself of half the fish at least. Take care both wings of the net are kept opposite each other.

Be sure your floats are never under water, if they are, the finest fish will go back over your net. In like manner be sure your leads reach the bottom, or the fish will escape beneath your net. If you have not depth of net to fish any particular hole or deep part, place your stopnet on the brink, and make your draught as near it as may be―never drag through it with that net, or you will inevitably lose your draught. The old rhyme applies most truly here,

If fish could hear as quick as they can see,

The devil might be a fisherman for me.

If it be inconvenient, and in a manner impracticable, from the unevenness of the bed of the river, to avoid dragging through such places, let there be a long trammel or two, placed behind the drag-net and removed at intervals as you drag on.

Caution the men to go slow enough. They are always too much in a hurry, so, at times, are their masters.

In drawing out, it is important that the wings of the net be kept even, or your fish, instead of falling into the throat of the net, will plunge over the wings and escape. A very common occurrence with bunglers.

TROLLING.

No hook is so killing as the bead-hook; but it can only be used before the weeds spring up, and is of little avail in most rivers after March and April.

The arrow-gorge is a useful hook as the weeds form no impediment to it. It may be worked successfully at all times for gorge-fishing. For snap-fishing we prefer a hook, much used in the Welland and Nene, invented, I believe, and certainly sold by Boyall of Stamford-a It is so simple, I think I can describe it with sufficient accuracy and clearness to enable any of your readers to make one, if not, I advise him to obtain a pattern hook by one of the guards on the North mails. A small plummet is appended to a piece of gimp, two

noted netter.

NO. XCVII.-VOL. XVI.

2 T

inches long. This gimp is tied to another gimp a foot long, in that part which is to be hung on the swivel of the trolling-line; and below the plummet is a piece of gimp, three inches long, to which three perch hooks in the form of a drag, are tied, and then another piece six inches long, to which three other hooks, in the same form, are also tied. It will be found in practice, in nine cases out of ten, that the pike will get one or other of these drags in his mouth when he strikes the bait-fish.

For gorge-fishing, I will describe a hook invented by my brother Tom. As the arrow and common gorge-hook occasion an unnatural stiffness about the bait-fish and a consequent awkwardness in its motions, an excellent hook is formed by casting a leaden plummet round the shank of a small trimmer-hook-fixing the gimp on before casting the lead. The plummet is then to be put in and the gimp brought out of the mouth of the bait-fish and the mouth sewn very slightly up, so as to allow the plummet to tear out, and the hook to turn, when the pike is struck. The bait-fish will thus work like that on the bead-hook; but care must be taken not to sew up its mouth too strongly, or the bait will be pulled through the pike's throat without hooking him. If this description enables any one to form the hook in question it will be found an invaluable one, from the first to the last day of the season. There is no bait equal to a roach of five inches.

If a pike lies in sight, watching for his prey, throw your bait-fish behind him. It will be seen by his instantly turning and seizing it, that this is the best place to throw it, as not tending to scare him, and the surest mode to excite his attention.

Fix yourself, if practicable, at a well stocked pond, and feed the pike on frogs and small fish. There is much to be learnt in trolling, by observing, through this means, the habits and motions of the pike in their ordinary courses and in taking their food.

Always get fresh baits if you can. A stale fish, or one with his scales off, is sure to create suspicion. A pike will strike such baits and carry them off in his mouth, but will not gorge one in six. Of course this applies chiefly to gorge-fishing.

Baits may be kept in a large fish-kettle, sunk in a pond or river. A small fish trunk will be found very useful for the same purpose; as bait are frequently not to be caught when the weather, during the fitful months of March and April, is best fitted for trolling.

There is an artificial stew in our garden formed from the waste water of one of the ponds; and any one having a run of water in his field or garden, need never want trolling bait by forming such a place, with a grating behind two small slackers. By closing the top one and pulling up the bottom one, the water is out in five minutes, and the bait-fish eady and healthy, without the least trouble.

To be continued.