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How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions are inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well shown when different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is known that a cross with a bull-dog has affected for many generations the courage and obstinacy of greyhounds; and a cross with a greyhound has given to a whole family of shepherd-dogs a tendency to hunt hares.
So I passed instead into our little school of the Abbé Grégoire a just and good man, of whom I learned little but to love him; and from another parish priest, an uncle of mine, a few miles away, I gained a passion for shooting the hares and partridges with which our country swarmed.
On these same plains of La Plata, we see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having nearly the same habits as our hares and rabbits and belonging to the same order of Rodents, but they plainly display an American type of structure.
As soon as the camp was formed, he would go out and set snares for hares, traps for birds, and lay lines in the nearest stream; while fish and game, of some sort, were generally added to the fare. "Upon my word," the Count, who sometimes rode with them, said one evening, "this varlet of yours, Master Philip, is an invaluable fellow; and Conde, himself, cannot be better served than you are.
The buffalo and the deer were without number; and, in truth, all the surrounding region swarmed with game, hares, turkeys, ducks, geese, swans, plover, snipe, and partridges. They shot them in abundance, after necessity and practice had taught them the art. The river supplied them with fish, and the bay with oysters.
On these same plains of La Plata we see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having nearly the same habits as our hares and rabbits, and belonging to the same order of Rodents, but they plainly display an American type of structure.
Daylight had just broke, when a well-known naturalist, gun in hand, wandering in search of specimens, observed a large fox making his way along the skirts of a plantation. Reynard looked cautiously over the turf-wall into the neighbouring field, longing evidently to get hold of some of the hares feeding in it, well aware that he had little chance of catching one by dint of running.
By the way, there is a Hindoo servant in the 19th Hussar lines, who at the approach of a "Long Tom" shell always falls reverently on his face and prays to it. At sundown, in hopes of adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Cæsar's Camp to shoot birds and hares.
We were happier than we knew. So far to show how we came to regard hares as our natural game, and how, though to be bird-hunters we had to grow up, we were hare-hunters as boys. The rush, the cheers, the yells, the excitement were a part of the sport, to us boys the best part. Of course, to hunt hares we had to have dogs at least boys must have the noise, the dash, the chase are half the battle.
Fabian H would frighten such fierce animals as the ox and the ass, for it is his custom to charm the hares and partridges by the sweet sound of his snores, for your Honor must know that this huntsman pursues his game while comfortably snoring in the grass." "What do you say, clown?"
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