HELPFUL SPLASHES OF WHITE 131 



say, but transmitted his splendid working qualities 

 to many descendants, and also, I am bound to admit, 

 his exact colour to a good many that I have seen. 

 He was a grandly shaped hound, and when one 

 huntsman of a neighbouring pack caught sight of 

 him and heard of his work, he never rested till he 

 had sent some of his best bitches to him, and excel- 

 lent results followed. No one, I think, likes the look 

 of a tanless black and white hound ; but Peter Beck- 

 ford remarks that " a good hound, like a horse, can't 

 be a bad colour." Still it appears to me that light 

 colours are preferable to dark in the field. Some 

 folk have ideas that the badger and hare pies are 

 " soft," that a predominance of white tells a tale 

 of constitutional weakness, but I think the great 

 hounds above mentioned show that this is not the 

 case. 



At the present time dark-coloured hounds with 

 very little white about them appear to be most 

 fashionable, and if of almost whole tan colour, they 

 are most admired of aU, judging from remarks I 

 hear, particularly at hound shows ; but I am heterodox 

 enough to believe that as a colour "the beautiful 

 Belvoir tan " is the least to be desired when hounds 

 are in chase. We are not all able to ride close to 

 hounds when the heyday of youth is passed, and, 

 indeed, the majority of the field must usually be 

 content to view the pack from some little distance 

 when they are running hard. Now in heather, over 

 ploughed land, or in rough, bracken-covered fields, 

 their fashionable colour is almost invisible, but a 

 pack of dappled hounds one can see a mile away. 



