THE HARRIER. 



223 



is a good workable size, and such hounds 

 should be able to slip along fast enough for 

 most people. Choose your hounds with 

 plenty of bone, but not too clumsy or 

 heavy ; a round, firm neck, not too short, 

 with a swan-like curve ; a lean head with 

 a long muzzle and fairly short ears ; 

 a broad chest with plenty of lung room, 

 fore legs like gun barrels, straight and 

 strong ; hind legs with good thighs and 

 well let down docks ; feet, round like 

 cats' feet, and a well-set-on, tapering 

 stern. Such a make and shape should 

 see many seasons through, and allow 

 you to be certain of pace and endur- 

 ance in your pack. 



It is useless to lay down any hard 

 and fast rule as to colour. It is so 

 much a matter of individual taste, but 

 light-coloured hounds are useful in a 

 kennel in point of enabling you to see 

 them well in the distance. 



Some Masters have a great fancy for 

 the dark colouring of the old Southern 

 Hound, but nothing could look much 

 smarter than a good combination of 

 Belvoir tan with black and white. 

 Puppies, as a rule, a week or two 

 after they are whelped, show a greater 

 proportion of dark marking than any 

 other, but this as they grow older soon 

 alters, and their white marking be- 

 comes much more conspicuous. Some 

 particular marking shows itself for 

 generations. It may be a little forked 

 white mark on the forehead of a 

 hound, and if watched for, it will be 

 seen quite distinctly occurring over and 

 over again in different members of that 

 one family. Again, particular traits of 

 character are seen recurring in a most 

 curious way, such as the fear of thunder, 

 or of guns. There is much to be taken 

 into consideration before starting to breed 

 your own hounds. The most satisfactory 

 way of keeping a really good pack together 

 is to breed your own hounds when you 

 have got a thoroughly good strain, taking 

 care to replenish them by occasional drafts 

 from well-known reliable kennels. And then , 

 too, every young entry coming into work 



provides a fund of interest, and I think 

 here may be urged the necessity of naming 

 your hound puppies say at two months old. 

 They learn their names astonishingly quickly 

 at this period of their lives, and I am con- 

 vinced that it saves them in after life much 











HARRIERS. 



From a Seventeenth-Century PRir 



of the whip and rating from Hunt servants, 

 who are seldom sufficiently quiet with 

 hounds. By learning their own names thus 

 early in life, they become obedient and 

 acquire good ways before the fact of being 

 obedient is any trouble to them ; and there 

 are not many prettier sights than to watch 

 a lot of very young puppies answering their 

 names in turn. It also prevents their being 

 shy. What is more tiresome than to call a 

 young hound up to you, and find that he 

 promptly goes in the opposite direction ? 



Let your puppies from their earliest youth 

 be out of doors all day long, if possible on 

 grass with a movable wire-netting enclosure, 



