HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 127 



extent, I think it can. It is not often that a pure 

 white foxhound is bred (though I saw a puppy, and 

 a very well-made one too, of that colour last year) 

 and it is not often perhaps that a hound whose colour 

 is almost white, is a very good one ; but I can swear 

 that in my experience the most wonderful working 

 hounds that I have seen have had plenty of white 

 about them, and these are very much the easiest to 

 see when in chase. I have in my possession a good 

 many portraits of celebrated hounds of a past day, 

 and I have looked with interest at the pictures of a 

 good many more. With hardly an exception they are 

 light-coloured hounds, or hounds that have a good 

 deal of white about them. 



Glancing back to early days of fox-hunting in the 

 eighteenth century, I have before me an engraving 

 from Stubbs' picture of the black, tan and white 

 Brocklesby Ringwood, 1788. Stubbs' hounds are full 

 of intelligence, but he did not always make them great 

 beauties. Ringwood is a very deep hound, standing 

 on short, almost stumpy forelegs that have great bone 

 and carry rare feet. Then there is Colonel Thornton's 

 famous Merkin and her puppies. She is black and 

 white with some tan about the head and a blue mottle 

 merging with the white. Merkin ran an attested trial 

 of four miles in seven minutes and half a second (there 

 were no chronographs, I think, in those days). She was 

 sold in 1795 for four hogsheads of claret, the seller to 

 have two couples of her whelps. 



There is plenty of white, too, about Brocklesby Rally- 

 wood (1843), as painted by Ferneley, before he went 

 to Belvoir in 1850 in exchange for Rutland to be the 



