necessity (that tyrant's plea) or the ignorance of man has condemned to
torture, injustice, or neglect!

The most delightful of all dogs are those rough-haired Scotch deerhounds
the author of "Waverley" loved so well. How timid and subdued are these
trusty hounds on ordinary occasions! yet how fierce and relentless to
pursue and slay their natural quarry, the antlered monarch of the glen!
Once, in Savernake Forest, where the yaffels laugh all day amid the
great oak trees, and the beech avenues, with their Gothic foliations and
lichened trunks, are the finest in the world, a young, untried deerhound
of ours slipped away unobserved and killed a hind "off his own bat."
Though he had probably never seen a deer before, hereditary instinct was
too strong, and he succumbed to temptation. Yet he would not harm a fox,
for on another occasion, when I was out walking, accompanied by this
hound and a fox-terrier, the latter bolted a large dog fox out of a
drain. When the fox appeared the deerhound made after him, and, in his
attempt to dodge, reynard was bowled over on to his back. But directly
he was called, the deerhound came back to our heels, apparently not
considering the vulpine race fair game. I will not vouch for the
accuracy of the story, but our coachman asserts that he saw this
deerhound at play with a fox in our kitchen garden,--not a tame fox, but
a wild one. I believe, myself, that this actually did happen, as the man
who witnessed the occurrence is thoroughly reliable.

There is no dog more knowing and sagacious in his own particular way
than a well-trained retriever. What an immense addition to the pleasure
of a day's partridge-shooting in September is the working of one of
these delightful dogs! Only the other day, when I was sitting on the
lawn, a retriever puppy came running up with something in his mouth,
with which he seemed very pleased. He laid it at my feet with great care
and tenderness, and I saw that it was a young pheasant about a
fortnight old. It ran into the house, and was rescued unharmed a few
hours afterwards by the keeper, who restored it to the hencoop from
whence it came. One could not be angry with a dog that was unable to
resist the temptation to retrieve, but yet would not harm the bird in
the smallest degree.

One does not often see teams of oxen ploughing in the fields nowadays.
Within a radius of a hundred miles of London town this is becoming a
rare spectacle. They are still used someti