HOKSES AND HOUNDS. 63 



ized by sad disasters — death often to the hounds, and divers 

 risks to man and horse. We can still, however, aver, that we 

 follow a beast of prey, and as such, the fox meets with little 

 sympatliy at our hands, and when overtaken by the hounds, he 

 dies as he has lived, game to the last, lighting with his enemies. 

 Our ears are not assailed by the screams of the hare, nor our 

 hearts melted by the tears of the deer (if he sheds any, which, 

 by the way, I think very problematical, if not altogether poeti- 

 cal); a wild stag at bay being quite as awkward a customer 

 as any over-driven infuriated bullock out of Smithfield market. 



It would be a matter of no little difficulty, and one of deep 

 research, to determine by whom the first regular pack of fox- 

 hounds was established, and of what materials it was composed. 

 The fox-hound is certainly an artificial animal, originated in 

 this country, and known in no other climate of the world ex- 

 cept where imported. If we are to credit Oliver Goldsmith, 

 the sheep-dog is the grand original of the canine race now dis- 

 persed over the globe ; but all the Goldsmiths in the universe 

 would fail, I am satisfied, to convince Tom Sebright or any 

 other artistical huntsman of the present day, that their darlings 

 ever could, by the barest possibility, lay claim to any affinity 

 with a sheep-dog. 



The manner in which Goldsmith arrives at this conclusion as 

 to the shepherd's dog being the original animal of the species, is 

 rather ingenious, if his argument is not altogether conclusive, 

 which, to my obtuse head, it certainly is not. His idea is that 

 "if other animals be compared with the dog internally, the 

 wolf and the fox will have the most perfect resemblance. It is 

 probable, therefore, that the dog, which most resembles the 

 wolf or the fox externally, is the original animal of its kind ; for 

 it is natural to suppose that, as the dog most nearly resembles 

 them internally, so he may be near them in external resem- 

 blance also, except where art or accident has altered his 

 form." 



This being admitted, if we look among the number of varie- 

 ties to be found in the dog, we shall not find one so like the 

 wolf or the fox as that which is called the shephercrs dog. Thus 

 argues Goldsmith, and he draws his conclusion by saying, that 

 as the dogs which have run wild in America, and those also of 

 Siberia, Lapland, and other cold countries, as well as the dogs 

 of the Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, and Malabar, have all 

 a long nose and pricked ears, thus resembling the shepherd's 

 dog in appearance, that therefore the shepherd's dog is the pri- 

 mitive animal of his kind, and that from this unpretending 

 original have been derived all the beautiful and magnificent 



