206 



THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 



deeds under the greatest difficulties in 

 the Peninsular War ; the important con- 

 quests all over the globe with mere handfuls 

 of men, and the hardihood of our Colonists 

 came about after the hard riding era had 

 commenced. The Iron Duke always HI- 



RE-TURNING FROM THE CHASE. 



PROM THE ENGRAVING BY P. C. CANOT, 



AFTER THE PAINTING BY J. WOOTTON (1770). 



sisted that his best officers were the first 

 flight men of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, 

 and he gave it as his opinion that Assheton 

 Smith would have been the greatest cavalry 

 general in the world. Then, again, the 

 horses were improved by Hugo Meynell's 

 discovery of the forward dash of the Fox- 

 hound and the development of the system 

 of following hounds at high pressure. The 

 horses were as much elated by the voice 

 of the hound in full cry as the men, and 

 the courageous jumping of high fences that 

 could not have been taken in cool blood 

 stamped the character of the English hunter 

 and made him the utility horse for all 



nations. Our respect for the Foxhound, 

 and the inspiriting cry of " Tally-ho ! " 

 have had a tremendous influence upon the 

 virility of our national life. 



There is plenty of proof that Foxhounds 

 were the very first of the canine races in 

 Great Britain to come 

 under the domination 

 of scientific breeding. 

 There had been hounds 

 of more ancient origin, 

 such as the Southern 

 Hound and the Blood- 

 hound ; but something 

 different was wanted to- 

 wards the end of the 

 seventeenth century to 

 hunt the wild deer that 

 had become somewhat 

 scattered after Crom- 

 well's civil war. The 

 demand was conse- 

 quently for a quicker 

 hound than those 

 hitherto known, and 

 people devoted to the 

 chase began to breed 

 it. Whether there were 

 crosses at first re- 

 mains in dispute, but 

 there is more proba- 

 bility that the policy 

 adopted was one of se- 

 lection ; those exception- 

 ally fast were bred with 

 the same, until the slow, 

 steady line hunter was improved out of 

 his very character and shape. At any 

 rate, there are proofs that in 1710 hounds 

 were to be found in packs, carefully bred, 

 and that at that time some of the hunts in 

 question devoted attention to the fox. In 

 his description of the De Coverley Hunt, 

 in 1711, Addison writes that Sir Roger's 

 stable doors were patched with noses that 

 belonged to foxes of the knight's own 

 hunting down. After this period the in- 

 terest in hound breeding must have become 

 very keen, as Somerville, who was born in 

 1699, and died in 1742, wrote much in the 

 years between 1725-30 on the shape and 



