The Bloodhound. 



the latter. These stories originally arose from the 

 ''Southern States" of America when slavery was 

 rife, and it is now positively stated that the hounds 

 kept by the slave owners were not bloodhounds, but 

 half-bred foxhounds — Virginian hounds — which were 

 quite as loth as our modern hounds to attack a 

 human being, although they might have hunted him 

 to a tree or other place where he had taken refuge. 

 Slaves, as a fact, were too valuable to be indis- 

 criminately worried by bloodhounds, as some sen- 

 sational writers have told us was of everyday 

 occurrence. 



The natural instinct of the bloodhound is to hunt 

 man rather than beast. As a puppy, he may put his 

 nose to the ground and fumble out the line of any 

 pedestrian who has just passed along the road. 

 Other dogs will, as a rule, commence by hunting 

 their master, the bloodhound finds his nose by hunt- 

 ing a stranger. There are old records of his being 

 repeatedly used for the latter purpose, whether the 

 quarry to be found were a murderer or poacher, or 

 maybe only some poor gentleman or nobleman 

 whose political belief or religion was not quite in 

 conformity with that of those bigots who happened 

 to rule over him. 



Early in the seventeenth century, when the Moss- 

 troopers (but a polite name for Scottish robbers) 



B 2 



