THE BLOODHOUND 57 



of trie Kouncls is an essential feature of success. It 

 is quite useless to expect the slightest good to be 

 done after an interval of twenty -four hours, and for 

 this reason I do not look with much hopefulness 

 upon isolated efforts. Surely it would not be diffi- 

 cult for some satisfactory scheme to be formulated, 

 and my own view is that one of the easiest and 

 most workable plans would be for the authorities 

 to subsidise hounds in every county, the county being 

 the most satisfactory unit for the purpose. At the 

 same time, some good might be accomplished, and 

 a substantial saving effected, if a couple of hounds 

 were attached to a penal settlement such as Dart- 

 moor. An escaped convict, no matter how thick a 

 fog prevailed at the time, would have absolutely 

 no chance of being at liberty for more than an hour 

 or two at the outside, and we should hear no more 

 of vast numbers of warders scouring the moor for a 

 day or two together, while the householders in the 

 vicinity are in a state of trepidation in case their 

 premises should be raided by desperate men. In 

 saying this I am indulging in no pleasing flights 

 of imagination ; what is being done constantly in 

 America can be done here under certain conditions, 

 but it is as well to emphasise that we cannot expect 

 any satisfactory performances in crowded districts. 

 The large tracts of sparsely inhabited country in 

 the United States render the task of the hounds 

 comparatively easy ; but even then it must be con- 

 sidered that it is a truly remarkable thing for a 

 crime to be elucidated by this agency twenty or 

 more hours after it has been perpetrated. Yet this 

 is what has been done time after time. Indeed, 

 there is on record an instance of a negro murderer 



