18 THE AMERICAN HUNTING DOG 



and leggy, has his counterpart in the Scottish 

 deerhound and the greyhound, while the hounds of 

 St. Hubert (11th century) were quite evidently 

 what we would call bassets to-day. The English 

 greyhound was a much smaller and shorter legged 

 dog than to-day and his name meant ''badger" 

 hound, later developed for speed in coursing hares 

 as the badger grew scarce. In point of fact, even 

 the cave man knew enough to mate fast dogs to- 

 gether to establish a racing type, heavy ones for 

 war dogs, small ones for lap dogs, etc., and for 

 this reason many breeds have been developed by 

 a simple process of selection, just as we can breed 

 out a bulldog cross on spaniels in eight genera- 

 tions. 



Some of the old breeds have become extinct, 

 such as the Irish wolfhound and the staghound, 

 the former of which was re-established not over a 

 hundred years ago, and the latter never having 

 been restored, its nearest representative to-day 

 being the Scottish deerhound. On the Continent 

 the name ''hound" was applied to all dogs; in 

 England to hunting dogs only, the Saxon word 

 "dog" covering all breeds. Owing to the change 

 in type to meet new forms of chase, the breeds of 

 the times of the knights looked little like the ani- 

 mals which bear the same name to-day, and many 



