Foxhounds 127 



attentions of the American hound. Some care- 

 fully selected and costly packs are used chiefly 

 for deer ; while the wildcat, being at once worthy 

 game and a hated depredator, becomes in other 

 localities the main object of sport. In Taney 

 County, Missouri, there is a magnificent preserve 

 on the White River where nearly a hundred wild- 

 cats were killed last season with the hounds ; not 

 all by the hounds, perhaps the majority being shot 

 after taking to the trees. 



Indeed, if I were writing a volume on Ameri- 

 can hounds, the most exciting chapters would be 

 descriptions of wolf hunts and the battles with 

 which they conclude. Hounds have to be hounds 

 in this sport ; for the hunts are hunts and the 

 battles are battles. 



Between Boston and Richmond there are many 

 hunt clubs — the Philadelphia neighborhood alone 

 having two score — which conduct the sport after 

 the English style. Some of these follow the 

 drag for the most part. The packs are often of 

 American breed ; as often English. The mem- 

 bers would not, I think, take issue at all with the 

 differentiation that they are riding clubs rather 

 than fox-hunting associations in the American 

 sense. 



Major Wadsworth, of the Genesee Valley 

 Hunt, has made a point of developing a high- 

 class pack of English blood, but during the past 



