a week, or shavings of pine or cedar when to be had
are better, must be used for their beds. Always feed your dogs together in
a V shaped trough, raised slightly from the ground, taking care to
restrain the greedy and encourage the shy feeders. In a building of this
sort, they will be perfectly warm and comfortable. Every portion of it
must be daily cleaned out, and the rubbish carried away. Twice a year it
should be whitewashed inside and out, and fumigated with sulphur, tobacco,
&c. This considerably helps to destroy vermin. Nothing conduces more to
disease than a filthy kennel, nothing vitiates a dog's nose more than
foetid smells. In the rear of this kennel should be your boiling house, if
your establishment requires one. All that is required is a copper, set in
brick, with a chimney, to boil mush and meat in, a barrel to hold soup,
and a ledge or tray, three or four inches deep, to pour the mush in to
cool and set; a chopping block, knife, ladle, with long wooden handle, to
stir and empty the copper with, a few hooks to hang flesh on, when you use
horse-flesh, &c., in place of heads--equally good, by the way, when you
can get it--shovel, broom, and buckets. I believe all in this department
is now complete and requisite, when you keep six or more dogs. The spare
place is good for breeding bitches, when you do not require it for your
tired dogs, as also for sick ones. In fact, you cannot well do without it.

And now methinks I may safely add a few words on guns. This, of course,
especially to the rising generation. I need not tell you not to put the
shot all in one barrel and the powder in the other, though I have
frequently seen it done, aye, and done it myself, when in a mooning fit;
but I will say, never carry your gun at full cock or with the hammers
down, than which last there cannot be anything more dangerous. The
slightest pull upon the cock is sufficient to cause it to fall so smartly
on the cone or nipple as to explode the cap. Positively, I would not shoot
a day, no, nor an hour, with a man that so carried his gun. At half cock
there is no danger. By pulling ever so hard at the trigger, you cannot get
it off; and if you raise the cock ever so little, it falls back to half
cock, or, at the worst, catches at full cock. Never overcharge your gun.
Two to two and a half drachms of powder, and one ounce to one and a
quarter of shot, is about the load. For summer shooting, still less. Never
take out a dirty gun, no