THE HUNTED FOX 109 



breeding of the foxhound. Primitive hunters would 

 see at once the advantage of a dog which hunted by 

 scent, and gave notice by his tongue of the dis- 

 coveries of his nose. 



In forest countries greyhounds must have been 

 comparatively useless, though no doubt the ancestor 

 of our greyhound was much less of a mere gaze- 

 hound than his descendants, and could, like the 

 lurcher, or the Scotch deerhound, use his nose at a 

 pinch. Thus the dog which would not only hunt by 

 nose, but speak advisedly with its tongue, must early 

 have been of value for every kind of chase, especially 

 in rough forest countries. The race of foxes must 

 soon have become accustomed to be hunted by scent 

 and used to the cry of hounds. 



For a long time the packs of hounds hunted 

 everything they came across, and it is hardly a 

 century and a half since the fox became the object 

 of special attention. Even later than that, well into 

 the nineteenth century, the fox was thought of as 

 vermin ; and in the West, where the fox-hunt was, 

 and still is, overshadowed by the hunting of the stag, 

 the owner of an historic pack told me that the people 

 regarded his father as a sort of superior rat-catcher 

 when he hunted foxes. Of the primitive fox-hunt a 

 vivid sketch is to be found in ' Guy Mannering,' both 



