56 THE AMERICAN HUNTING DOG 



Spanish strains all being well represented — and 

 from a mixture of them, through a century of 

 training and breeding to high-class performers 

 only, came the American coonhound. The French 

 hound is more like him than any other recognis- 

 able breed to-day; long-eared, rat-tailed, power- 

 ful, gifted with an unequalled nose, he became the 

 well-known ''potlicker" or ''smell dog" of the 

 South, while the New England and New York 

 hounds, used mostly for deer and fast fur, devel- 

 oped into famous fox-hunting strains, of which the 

 Buckfield, Portsmouth and Pennsylvania are rep- 

 resentative. A good deal of foxhound was 

 crossed in on these latter to give more speed, the 

 Irish hounds of Maryland being used extensively 

 for that purpose, for these were then the best of 

 the old grey foxhounds of the South. In those 

 days hunting the grey fox was the principal sport 

 of the Southern gentry, and from Maryland to 

 Tennessee every wealthy planter had his pack of 

 grey fox dogs. Washington's favourite entry in 

 his diary, after retirement to Mount Vernon, was 

 ''Ketched a fox to-day" — or two of them if the 

 luck was good! The grey fox was a slow little 

 beast and the long-eared hound was plenty fleet 

 enough. With the introduction of the red fox 

 from England and the North, all this was changed, 



