02 The Irish Naturalist. September, 



bred is hardly to be distinguished from an indifferent blood- 

 hound. He informs us that it is quite confined to Ireland, 

 and that it seems to be a genuine descendant of the old 

 southern hound. It was used in Richardson's time, that 

 is to say about a century ago, for deer-hunting.^^ Dalziel 

 scarcely mentions the Kerry Beagle. He describes it as a 

 minature bloodhound, being of precisely the same colour 

 and sharing many of that noble dog's chief characteristics. 

 Mr. John F. Baily, Secretary of the Irish Wolfhound Club, 

 tells me that the Kerry Beagle is a genuine breed of hound, 

 as large as a foxhound, black-and-tan in colour, and well 

 known in the South of Ireland. A family named Ryan, of 

 Scrateen, Co. Limerick, always kept a pack of them, a.nd 

 tradition says that they were originally brought from 

 Bordeaux to Kerry. According to Dalziel the term " beagle " 

 was not used before Elizabethan times .^' It was always 

 applied to a small dog varying from lo to i6 inches in height. 

 It would scarcely be correct, therefore, to apply the term 

 " Kerry Beagle " to a dog which is almost twice as tall. 



Reference has been made to the fact that a dog 

 possibly of the nature of a Beagle was employed in Ireland 

 in very rem.ote times for starting game ; but we can have 

 no direct evidence of its general features until we discover 

 its remains. 



The Irish Water Spaniel. 



This large woolly dog is normally of a dark shade of liver 

 or puce colour, which is a kind of reddish purple. Hence 

 the name of " Red Fisherman " which has sometimes been 

 applied to it. Dalziel describes it as having somewhat the 

 appearance of an old ewe whose fleece has escaped last year's 

 shearing. He thinks that it may be a cross of a Poodle or 

 of a Russian Retriever. The woolly coat v/ould seem to 

 indicate a Poodle cross. At the time when Dalziel wrote 

 his work on British Dogs about thirty years ago, 

 tvv^o varieties of the Water Spaniel existed in Ireland, 

 both characterised by the head being heavily furnished with 



26 Richardson, H. D. : " The Dog, its origin, natural history and 

 varieties." New edition, London, 1857. 



*' Dalziel, Hugh: "British Dogs." 2nd ed., London, 1889—97. 



