XIV 

 THE HOUND 



STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE DRAFTING FOR FAULTS AMERICAN 



AND ENGLISH HOUNDS COMPARED 



HE foxhound has attained his present degree 

 of perfection after two hundred years and 

 more of the most careful selecting and breed- 

 ing. It is owing to the persistent striving of 

 English masters of hounds, generation after generation, to 

 produce the highest standard of utility, combined with 

 beauty and symmetry of form, colour, and markings, the 

 nicest balancing of tongue and nose, and the utmost uni- 

 formity in pace, that these and the dozen other qualities 

 that go to make a perfect hound have been achieved. 

 There is no animal in the world, not even the horse, that 

 has had such attention paid to its breeding as the foxhound 

 has had in England. Few families can show an unbroken 

 pedigree of such length as may be traced in those of thou- 

 sands of foxhounds, and, when it comes to breeding, equally 

 few in the nation can produce such purity of blood 

 and such an untarnished escutcheon as the foxhounds of 

 the present day in England. Indeed, there is none in the 

 whole list of domestic animals whose standard of excellence 



157 



