The Hound 163 



us hope the ambition which Mr. Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., 

 has for his pack of pure-bred American hounds at Aiken, 

 South Carolina, to mark out a line of improvement toward 

 a higher standard, will meet with the unqualified success it 

 deserves. It is a most sportsmanlike undertaking. The 

 most he had to start with was a nose and a musical tongue. 



For the most part the so-called American hound is a sort 

 of nondescript dog, without a standard. American hounds, 

 which are all more or less of bloodhound extraction, are 

 certainly very well adapted to hunting the hilly, rough 

 country, the ploughed and sun-baked fields generally, of 

 their native land. They are most methodical, painstaking, 

 and plodding, and seldom fail, if they can follow the trail 

 at all, to account for the fox. 



They are well enough, that is, so far as they go ; but 

 fox-hunting is not simply the killing of a fox. A home- 

 made snare, a rat-trap, or a bit of " rough-on-rats " would 

 do that much with far more ease and despatch. Whoever 

 has ridden to a nondescript pack of hounds, in which 

 absence of any kind of uniformity is the chief characteristic, 

 and has afterward followed a pack of up-to-date foxhounds 

 in England, will have marked such a contrast as will for- 

 ever after prevent him from repeating what one so often 

 hears in America : " I don't care what a hound is like, as 

 long as he can hunt ! " 



An erroneous notion is current among hunting men in 

 America that in some way symmetry and beauty are antago- 

 nistic to utility, and that the American hound is better, if 

 anything, than the English. It must be admitted that there 

 is some excuse, if no reason, for this belief. When Ameri- 



