THE AMERICAN FOXHOUND 21 



as the Bourbon County or Blue Grass hounds— in breeding they . 

 were the same as the Maupin hounds. Looking at the map you 

 will find these counties in the center of the blue grass region. I 

 had the creme de la creme of the Maupin blood, and as good red 

 fox hounds as ever made a track after Reynard. These I crossed 

 upon the best of the Robertson or Maryland hounds. I was the 

 first in this county to make that cross, and I made it in oppo- 

 sition to my hunting companions. To-day they stand convinced 

 that I was right. I produced great red fox hounds through the 

 pure Maupins, Old Trix, Flirt, Lizzie and Die, crossed on the 

 Wild Irishman (son of Old May), Tickler, Red Stags, Ben C, 

 Whitey and Fury, who were all pure Robertson. This cross is 

 the so-called Goodman hound. 



I do not think that the Maryland or Irish blood is the best, 

 but, if it is, we have here hounds that are fourteen-sixteenths 

 pure Irish, whose ancestors were brought from Maryland by Mr. 

 Robertson. They have but one out-cross (two-sixteenths) and 

 that is the best blood in them, they run back through Whitey, 

 Fury, Wag and Red Stags to White Tickler and May uncon- 

 taminated. There is no Birdsong blood in them. We have had 

 in Kentucky since the war many of the Birdsong hounds, that 

 were brought here by our fox-hunters, who were in Georgia 

 trading in horses and mules, but we have had other hounds I 

 liked much better. I guess those that came to Kentucky were 

 an inferior lot and not Birdsongs at all, for fox-hunters, like 

 fishermen, will bear watching. I received a letter recently from 

 a gentleman in Alabama, stating that he had a Whitey-Fury 

 hound, four years old. I had the unpleasant duty of informing 

 him that Whitey and Fury had been dead for fifteen or eighteen 

 years. 



I don't think that speed- alone is the great requisite in a red 

 fox hound. Some of our fastest hounds are our most indifferent 

 red fox hounds. I want courage, speed, bottom, endurance, 

 constitution, nose and fox sense, plenty of bone and feet like 

 iron — then you have red fox hounds that are able and willing to 

 run five days in succession and make a good race every day. T 

 have seen plenty of lionnds that would make one or two good 

 races a week and run to the front in them, but after that they 

 would hunt their beds. They are not the kind I want. I do not 

 think that any fox-hunters, with the exception of the Walker 

 brothers, put their hounds to so severe a test as we do. We 



