m THE AMERICAN FOXHOUND 



of having run down, caught and killed two red foxes in one day. 

 He was killed by an express train the following year, while 

 killing a red fox on the railway track, and one of the fox's ears 

 was sent to me as a memento. Bugle showed the same wonder- 

 ful speed and killing powers of his sire, and was the first fox- 

 hound I ever owned in New England that could run down and 

 kill a fox on my hunting ground. 



THE MARYLAND HOUND. 

 By John C. Bentley, Sandy Spring, Md. 



The Maryland hound, like most satisfactory things, has been 

 the result of evolution. The hound of to-day, in this state, is 

 the only hound which can successfully hunt the Maryland fox 

 on his chosen ground. The counties of Harford, Baltimore, 

 Howard, Montgomery, and Carroll are pre-eminently the natural 

 home of the red fox. These counties have a net-work of rivers 

 cutting their way to the sea, through rocky bluffs, whose banks 

 are densely covered with ivy, the outer timber, above the bluffs, 

 being often thick pines, and a majority of the river country is 

 still heavy woodland. 



These rocky bluffs abound in deep dens, in which his fox-ship 

 is safe from hounds and hunter. The ivy banks, as they are 

 called, require a tough, wiry dog to push through them, or he 

 cannot make the fox come out, and the long reaches from one 

 river to the next, when the fox breaks cover, will tax any but 

 dogs built to travel at great speed, for given good scenting, there 

 is nothing to prevent the foxhound from running at his best gait 

 across the high, comparatively open country. 



It is not out of place in a history of the Maryland hound to 

 chronicle the fact that to Maryland is due the thanks of fox- 

 hunters for the red fox. In an old print of 1738 is an interesting 

 account of this fact. One August evening, in what is now 

 Talbot county, on the eastern shore of Maryland, eight prosper- 

 ous tobacco planters were discussing the relative merits of the 

 red and gray fox. Four of these planters had hunted the wily 

 red fox in Old England, and rather cast imputations upon the 

 gray fox hunters. The discussion waxed so warm, that to prove 

 their contention, one of these planters (history unfortunately 

 .does not give his name) offered the use of his tobacco boat, the 



