56 THE AMERICAN FOXHOUND 



Mississippi, Massachusetts, New York, and all over Arkansas, 

 and both their appearance and performance have challenged the 

 admiration of hunters wherever they have been. 



They take to hunting foxes as a bird dog does to birds. They 

 train themselves if given an opportunity. They are in evidence 

 in any hunt, and in camp hunts I have hunted them night and 

 day for a week, and they are always willing to go and stay. 



THE COOK STRAIN. 

 By A. C. Heffenger, M. D. 



This strain of American foxhounds, so much in vogue in all 

 parts of the United States fifteen years ago, has almost entirely 

 disappeared, and it is doubtful if any of the pure blood exist 

 to-day. Their originator, the late Mr. H. E. Cook of Detroit, 

 Michigan, began the development of the strain in 1866 or '67, 

 and his idea was to produce a foxhound with the cold nose and 

 correct hound head of the native type, with the clean neck and 

 shoulders, and general physical excellence of the English fox- 

 hound trimmed into racing form. That he succeeded in 

 breeding some of the most beautiful and racily formed fox- 

 hounds ever seen in this country, no good hound judge who saw 

 them can deny. They had plenty of bone and muscle too, and 

 their heads were models of hound character, but where Mr. 

 Cook failed was in obtaining sufficient coat and leather, and to 

 these short-comings may be attributed the passing of the strain. 

 It is impossible to determine where Mr. Cook obtained the origi- 

 nal specimens from which he made his crosses leading up to his 

 distinctive type, but from their heads and smooth coats it would 

 seem that they came from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and northern 

 Ohio. These Cook foxliounds showed in head, coat and stern, 

 what the up-to-date hound man would call pot-licker blood, or 

 in other words total absence of tlie blood of the modern English 

 foxhound. They were both bench and field trial winners, but 

 their success was most marked in the bench shows of the United 

 States, and I think, in Canada also. 



In fact these foxliounds swept everything before them in the 

 bench shows of the country until the Kentucky breeders began 

 showing their type, with the modern English cross in it. These 

 Kentucky hounds, as best represented by Big Strive and Pearl 



