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fawn in colour, a huge specimen of his variety,. weighing over 106lb., but unfortunately spoiled by his execrable fore legs and feet. On the contrary, Mrs. Humphries' Don, that once did a considerable amount of winning, excelled in fore legs and feet, but was weak and straight in his pasterns; a very plain-headed hound, always much over estimated. Mr. E. Nichols had a dark-coloured hound, called Triumph, that excelled in head and ears, and perhaps there has been no better hound in this respect than Cromwell, by Nestor-Daisy, and bred by Mr. W. Nash in 1884. The head properties of this hound were so fine that on his death, in 1892, a model was taken of them by Sir Everett Millais, who had Cromwell in his kennels at the time. But here a list cannot be given of all the excellent bloodhounds that have made their appearance of late years, the dog-show catalogues afford a better selection than I could supply here, and the owners of the kennels named on a preceding page are certainly to be complimented on the progress they have made with the bloodhound, notwithstanding the difficulty to be surmounted in rearing the puppies.

Mr. Edwin Brough, no doubt the most experienced breeder of the present day, believes the modern bloodhound to be much speedier on foot than in the old days of the Mosstroopers, and there are now, in

1897, more really good bloodhounds to be found in this country than has ever been the case. Perhaps Bono, Bardolph, Burgundy, Barbarossa, Brunhilda, and Benedicta, from the Scarborough kennels, generally have never been excelled; and now, in 1897, the two latter, as Bono and Bardolph had done. earlier on, often win the special cup awarded to the best dog in the show. Mr. H. C. Hodson's Rameses, Rollick, Romeo, and Rubric are all hounds of high class, and the names of several others equally good could easily be mentioned, including Mrs. Heyden's South Carolina, Mrs. C. Tinker's Dimple, and Mr. Bowker's Berengaria.

The pedigrees of our present bloodhounds have been well kept during the past generation or so, and their reliability in the Stud Book is undoubted.

The late Mr. J. H. Walsh ("Stonehenge ") appears to have had a prejudice against the temperament and character of the bloodhound, formed evidently by a very savage and determined dog of Grantley Berkeley's, called Druid. Whether modern dog shows have been the means of improving this hound's temper, and making him as amiable and devoted a friend as any other dog, I cannot tell; but, that he is so, no one who has ever kept the variety will doubt. Bring a bloodhound up in the house or stable and use him as a companion, and he

will requite you for your trouble. He is gentle and kind, less addicted to fighting than many other big dogs; he is sensible, cleanly, of noble aspect, and in demeanour the aristocrat of hounds.

Of course, there are ill-conditioned dogs of every variety, but the average bloodhound will develop into as good a companion as any other of his race; he may be shy at first, but kindness will improve him in this respect. In hunting, he is slower than the foxhound, but more painstaking than are the members of the fashionable packs. He dwells on the quest a considerable time, seemingly enjoying the peculiar sensation he may derive through his olfactory organs, and will cast on his own account; the latter, a faculty that ought not to be lost, though in many hunting countries, where a good gallop is considered more desirable than the observation of hound work, the master or huntsman assists the hounds, rather than allows them to assist themselves.

The lovely voice the bloodhound possesses need not be dilated upon by me, and moreover, he has a power of transmitting that "melody" to his offspring to an unusual extent. I fancy that our modern otterhound owes something of his melodious cry to some not very remote crosses with the bloodhound; and if I mistake not, the late Major Cowen found this strain of Druids" useful in his well-known Braes o' Derwent

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foxhounds. Mr. C. H. Wilson, master of the Oxenholme staghounds, is crossing his foxhounds and harriers with bloodhounds, in order to restore the voice and music which in a great measure had been lost in breeding for pace.

If asked to recommend a large dog as a companion, I should certainly place the bloodhound very high on the list, possibly on a level with the St. Bernard, and only below the Scottish deerhound And in one respect he is better even than the latter; for he is not nearly so quarrelsome with other dogs. Not very long ago, a bloodhound was running about the busy streets of Brixton daily; he never snarled at a passing cur or terrier, and was the favourite of every little boy and girl in the neighbourhood. Had their parents known that the big black and brown creature their children were petting and stroking on the head was a bloodhound, the ferocious dog of story books and history, what a scene there would have been. And still more recently it is no uncommon sight to see a lady and her maid accompanied by three couples of bloodhounds enjoying themselves on one of our most frequented suburban commons. Here the big hounds romp and enjoy themselves and seem to be under better command than the collies and terriers, with which all such districts abound.

Sir E. Landseer, the animal painter, thoroughly appreciated the bloodhound, its staid manner, its majestic appearance. He, with Mr. Jacob Bell, kept hounds of his own, and all know how he immortalised them on canvas. His "Sleeping Bloodhound," now in the National Gallery, was a portrait of Mr. Bell's favourite Countess, run over and killed in a stable. yard. It was after her death she was painted, forming the subject, "A sleep that has no waking." Grafton, in the popular picture, "Dignity and Impudence" was a bloodhound considered to be of great merit in his day, now he would be regarded as a very ordinary specimen.

Mr. Brough, writing in the Century Magazine, some few years since, goes at considerable length into the training of bloodhounds, which is best done by allowing the hound to hunt the "clean boot," rather than one smeared with blood or anything else.

He says:

"Hounds work better when entered to one particular scent and kept to that only. Mr. Brough never allows his hounds to hunt anything but the clean boot, but begins to take his pups to exercise on the roads when three or four months old, and a very short time suffices to get them under good command. You can begin scarcely too early to teach pups to hunt the clean boot. For the first

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