i26 Modern Dogs. 



the greyhound, but this I consider quite incorrect, nor 

 in my researches have I been able to come across 

 anything likely to sustain such a statement. If the 

 deerhound is to be found in greater numbers now 

 than previously, it is only because more attention is 

 paid to his breeding, and because the many strains 

 that a hundred years and more ago were in the out 

 of the way places of the Highlands have, by better 

 communication, been brought within the radius of 

 canine admirers. Scrope, in his " Deer Stalking," 

 published in 1838, has naturally much to write about 

 the deerhound. He it is recommends the fox- 

 hound and greyhound cross, and says that the 

 celebrated sportsman Glengarry crossed occasionally 

 with bloodhound, still Macneill of Colonsay, who 

 wrote the article in " Days of Deerstalking," that 

 deals mostly with those hounds, confesses that there 

 were still pure deerhounds to be found when he 

 states them to be very scarce at the time he wrote. 

 Maybe they were scarce, but not sufficiently so as 

 to induce people to attempt to reproduce them by 

 such an unhallowed alliance. 



A favourite sporting author from my earliest boy- 

 hood days has been Charles St. John, who, in his 

 " Highland Sports," writes so charmingly and naturally 

 of all he saw and shot and caught during his 

 excursions. He wrote but eight years after Scrope, 



