220 



THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 



strains of blood. On his retirement the 

 post of Lord de Rothschild's huntsman 

 was filled by John Boore, who had been 

 kennel huntsman to Lord Willoughby de 

 Broke during nearly the whole of the time 

 his lordship was building up the Warwick- 

 shire to be worth 10,000. It will be 

 seen, therefore, that the Rothschild hunt 

 has been gifted with the greatest advan- 

 tages in the breeding of a pack of hounds 

 in Fred Cox's time, and they are said 

 to have improved since then. In those 

 days, however, it was a beautiful pack 

 of hounds. All alike, dogs 23^ inches, 

 bitches 22 inches, and as sorty in re- 

 gard to colour as those of Belvoir. The 

 good the Rothschild hunt has done to 

 Buckinghamshire cannot be estimated. It 

 has enriched the county so that it is one 

 of the most prosperous in the kingdom, 

 and Lord de Rothschild and Mr. Leopold 

 de Rothschild are ever the farmers' best 

 friends. If ever the faddists succeed in the 

 suppression of hunting the carted deer, 

 Lord de Rothschild has only to turn his 

 pack from deer to fox, to equal in quality 

 the beauties of the Belvoir and the War- 

 wickshire. 



The old Staghounds were at Badminton 

 before 1750, as seen by pictures in the 

 possession of the Duke of Beaufort, but 

 the story of the Silkwood run in the fifth 

 Duke's time, when hounds by accident 

 settled on a fox and had a brilliant run 

 of an hour and a half, decided the question 

 of Fox versus Deer, and from that time 

 Foxhounds only have been located in the 

 famous Gloucestershire kennels. The big 

 25-inch hound of Badminton, however, has 

 always been in great request amongst the 

 patrons of stag-hunting, and for many years 

 the Devon and Somerset, hunting the wild 

 red deer, were ever anxious to get the 

 draft from Badminton. In other countries- 

 France and Germany especially the Stag- 

 hound of the day is really the English 

 Foxhound. 



THE WELSH HOUND. 



THE wild mountains of Wales have al- 

 ways wanted a low scenting hound with 



a great deal of tongue and in other re- 

 spects bearing a similarity to the Fox- 

 hound. They must be stout, as the 

 hill foxes give tremendously long runs, 

 often of three or four hours, and the steep 

 declines into the valleys are a test indeed 

 for shoulders. Without plenty of music, 

 too, they would become lost to the field in 

 the majority of cases, and those who have 

 enjoyed runs with them speak rapturously 

 of the steadiness of Welsh Hounds, their 

 never-failing cry, and general staunchness. 

 Some great sportsmen, Colonel Anstruther 

 Thomson for one, have been so enamoured 

 with Welsh hunting as to have thought the 

 hounds superior to English Foxhounds ; 

 but in this they have been mistaken, as 

 whenever the experiment has been tried 

 of bringing hounds from Wales into English 

 counties they have been found much too 

 slow, and wanting in drive. Colonel Thom- 

 son had many hounds of the Gogerddan 

 blood at one time in the Atherstone, but 

 they did not do at all for Warwickshire and 

 Leicestershire. 



It is well authenticated that the Llangibby 

 pack existed as far back as 1750, and for 

 nearly a hundred years the hounds were 

 inbred to a sort of their own, but much 

 resembled the rough Otter-hound, standing 

 about 23^ inches (the dogs), long and low, 

 with heads of almost a Bloodhound type, 

 very strong and bony for their size, coats 

 very wiry and somewhat rough, and stern 

 a little shorter than in Foxhounds, but 

 carried gaily. 



That good authority, " Borderer," says 

 that when Mr. John Lawrence took the 

 country in 1856, he got a different stamp 

 of hound with much Harrier blood in them ; 

 and it is notable that Mr. Lawrence was 

 Master for fifty years, and lived until he 

 was ninety-two. He appeared to have 

 every faith in Welsh Hounds, as when his 

 friend, Mr. Reginald Herbert, commenced 

 hunting the Monmouthshire and did not 

 kill many foxes, he wrote and said : 

 " My dear fellow you must have Welsh 

 blood in your pack, I will help you." The 

 Llangibby had a great name, but what 

 proportion of the pack was pure Welsh it 



