192 THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DOG. 



In England, doubtless their hard and fast notions of the 

 right make-up of a pack, and the stiff and rigid technical- 

 ities of the meet and hunt, have prevented in some 

 degree that complete adaptation of means to ends which 

 has been perfected with us, who have never been in love 

 with pomp and vanities and stilted torn-fooleries. Never- 

 theless, in England, it began after a time to be seen 

 that faster Hounds must be had if any foxes were to be 

 caught, and hence crosses were made to the Greyhound, 

 he having already been crossed to the Bulldog, and the 

 result has been more rangy, speedier, smaller, and fiercer 

 Hounds. 



To keep within sound of such packs, moreover, the 

 hunting-horse of our great-grandfathers had to be replaced 

 by one of more blood, more speed, more courage, more 

 endurance at the .highest rate of speed all of which 

 points were covered at a stroke by more blood. Following 

 this development, a new style of horsemanship was de- 

 manded; and the English country gentleman is no dude 

 on horseback. The style of the pert Newmarket jockey, 

 imported, aped, and loved by American fashionable dudism 

 rampant, is by no means the style of the English gentle- 

 man on horseback. 



The man capable of making a creditable exhibition on 

 an English hunting-field to day must be a great horseman, 

 riding a great horse. Now the central force which gave 

 to this evolution its initial impulse, and has carried it for- 

 ward to its acme of development, is the speed and bottom 

 of the English fox. 



It is not to be disputed that the thing hunted determines 

 all the details of the hunt. If a man attack a grizzly, 

 away back in some lonely canon, he will soon perceive that 

 a Winchester Express is one of the modern details of the 

 combat, nicely adjusted to the fighting- weight of Ursus 

 Tiorribilis. In this view of the case, the red fox can claim 

 a dignity which has not been accorded to him hitherto 

 the dignity of statesmanship as the producer of important 

 national and international results. British horsemanship 



