Hound Breeding 169 



straightness of the fore legs, and the shape of the feet. 

 They have succeeded also, as will be seen in the pictures 

 of foxhounds in this volume, in preserving the head-car- 

 riage and the neck of the greyhound, the latter as much 

 smaller in proportion to the size of the foxhound's body 

 as the legs, especially the fore legs, are enlarged. This, 

 again, shows to what a wonderful degree of comeliness and 

 utility these animals have attained. Altogether I reaffirm 

 my belief that the English foxhound is the most wonderful 

 example of the art of breeding for improvement anywhere 

 to be observed. 



It is by no means easy to produce a new breed of domes- 

 tic animals, even under the most favourable circumstances. 

 We may cross two families of dairy cattle, or two families 

 of beef cattle, or the thoroughbred with the standard horse, 

 with a view to producing a new family ; but it would be 

 considered madness and a waste of time to attempt to form 

 a new breed by crossing a thoroughbred with a clydesdale. 

 In crossing families of similar tendencies, the first cross 

 often produces a very useful animal ; after that what the 

 two families have in common will be their original inferior- 

 ity. The improvements developed in either family through 

 fifty or a hundred or hundreds of years disappear. A 

 clydesdale and a thoroughbred would not mix or blend any 

 more than oil and water would. The greyhound-blood- 

 hound cross must have been quite as rank an out-cross as a 

 thoroughbred-clydesdale cross, and many times more difficult. 

 The greyhound, entirely deficient in nose, and the blood- 

 hound, depending on nothing else, — the slowest and the 

 fastest, the loudest, deepest-mouthed, and the most silent, — 



