26 Modern Dogs. 



entirely discontinued, at any rate so far as public 

 exhibitions of them are concerned. 



With the introduction of dog shows the general 

 public were enabled to see howfar the bloodhound sur- 

 vived, and the early exhibitions held at Birmingham 

 always included two nicely filled classes of this dog, 

 which many persons believed to be almost extinct. 



" Stonehenge," writing in 1869, says : 



Until within the last twenty-five years, or thereabouts, the blood- 

 hound has been almost entirely confined to the kennels of the 

 English nobility; but at about that distance of time Mr. Jennings, 

 of Pickering, in Yorkshire, obtained a draft or two from Lord 

 Faversham and Baron Rothschild, and in a few years, by his 

 skill and care, produced his Druid and Welcome, a magnificent 

 couple of hounds, which he afterwards sold, at what was then 

 considered a high price, to Prince Napoleon for breeding purposes. 

 In the course of time, and probably from the fame acquired by 

 these dogs at the various shows, his example was followed by his 

 north-country neighbours, Major Cowen and Mr. J. W. Pease, who 

 monopolised the prizes of the show bench with successive Druids, 

 descended from Mr. Jennings's dog of that name, and aided by 

 Draco, Dingle, Dauntless, &c., all of the same strain. In 1869, 

 however, another candidate for fame appeared in Mr. Holford's 

 Regent, a magnificent dog, both in shape and colour, but still of 

 the same strains, and, until the appearance of Mr. Reynold Ray's 

 Roswell in 1870, no fresh blood was introduced among the first- 

 prize winners at our chief shows. The dog, who died in 1877, 

 maintained his position for the same period almost without 

 dispute, and even in his old age it took a good dog to beat him. 



About 1860, Lord Bagot, of Blithefield, near Tarn- 

 worth, had some very fine hounds, and was success- 



