272 THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DOG. 



to draft a standard; bench shows were requested to provide 

 suitable classes, where previously only one or two and per- 

 haps no classes at all had been assigned the breed; special 

 prizes were offered by the club to stimulate competition, 

 and show managers were requested to appoint as judges 

 men who were especially interested in the breed rather than 

 men who perhaps had never seen a Beagle at work, and 

 consequently could not know, from a practical stand-point, 

 what is required of one to make it an ideal working Hound. 

 The result is that the different shows have adopted the 

 standard of the said club, invite its members to judge, and 

 where the entries at the principal shows had previously 

 consisted of one or two mediocre specimens, and perhaps as 

 many nondescripts, under the plea that they were ' f rabbit 

 dogs," the quality of the classes is now on fully as high a 

 plane as that of any of the other breeds of field dogs exhib- 

 ited, and our breeders are now breeding them as carefully 

 and as true to type as any other breed of field dogs is 

 bred. 



The entries at the prominent shows now number in the 

 thirties and forties, and where, formerly, all types and sizes 

 were represented, the classes now exhibit an evenness here- 

 tofore unseen. The scene at the Westminster Kennel 

 Club, New York show, in 1888, when the open dog class of 

 Beagles was being judged, was such that it will not soon 

 be forgotten by the writer, nor by many other fanciers of 

 the Beagle who witnessed it. The class consisted of some 

 fifteen or more Hounds, everyone of them I believe worthy 

 a mention, and all of them Hounds which a few years since 

 would have been capable of winning first prizes or cham- 

 pionship honors at any of our shows. They exhibited such 

 a marked similarity of type and size that I remarked to my 

 friend Mr. S. T. Hammond, while looking them over, that 

 one might well suppose they were representatives of a 

 single pack which had been selected by their owner to 

 represent his type, whereas the Hounds present repre- 

 sented drafts from several different kennels. 



The manner in which they appeared is as vivid in the 



