1 8 British Dogs. 



endurance of the competitors, as shown in their endeavours to accomplish 

 their object ; and the possession of the hare is of little consequence, 

 except to the pothunter or currant jelly devotee, who is quite out of the 

 pale of genuine coursing society. 



Although what I am going to say will be as stale and tiresome to and 

 as likely to create a smile in many as listening to a child's first lesson 

 in the alphabet, I consider it, for the reasons already given, necessary. 

 Two dogs only are slipped at a hare, and this has always been the 

 honourable practice in this country. Even in Turberville's Observations on 

 Coursing we find the maxim " If the greyhounds be but yonge or slow 

 you may course with a lease at one hare, but that is seldom seen, and a 

 brase of dogges is ynow for such a poore beaste." 



The hare being found, or so-ho'd, and given law a fair start of eighty 

 or a hundred yards the dogs are slipped, in the run up, as in after 

 stretches following a turn, the relative speed of the dogs is seen ; but 

 the hare, being pressed, will jerk, turn, and wind in the most nimble 

 manner, testing the dogs' smartness in working, suppleness, and agility 

 in making quick turns, and "it is a gallant sport to see how the hare 

 will turn and wind to save herself out of the dogge's mouth, so that 

 sometimes, when yon think that your greyhound doth, as it were, gape to 

 take her, she will turn and cast them a 1 good way behinde her, and so save 

 herself by turning, wrenching, and winding." It is by the practice of 

 these clever wiles and shifts that the hare endeavours to reach her covert, 

 and in closely following her scut and o'ermastering her in her own devices 

 that a greyhound displays the mastery of this branch of his business, in 

 which particular a slower dog will often excel an opponent that has the 

 foot of him in the stretches ; but, with this working power, a facility in 

 making short turns, speed must be combined, or it stands to reason points 

 could not be made except on a comparatively weak hare. It is, therefore, 

 important that the conformation of the dog should be such as to combine 

 speed with a strength and suppleness that will, as far as possible, enable 

 him to control and guide the velocity with which he is moving, as his 

 quick eye sees the game swerve or turn to one side or another. 



As the death of the hare when it is a kill of merit that is, when 

 accomplished by superior speed and cleverness, and not by the accident 

 of the foremost dog turning the hare, as it were, into the killer's mouth 

 is a consideration in reckoning up the total of good points made, it is 



