140 WITH HOUND AND TERRIER. 



commended to the intercession of St Hubert for 

 their cure. Every year three couple of the hounds 

 were sent by the abbot as a present to the King 

 of France, and the custom only ceased towards the 

 close of the eighteenth century, A great admirer 

 of the breed, and one who has owned and bred 

 more than 300 of them, is M. le Comte le Conteulx 

 de Canteleu, who has told us much about their 

 history. In prehistoric times the St Hubert 

 hounds came from the country of the Ardennes, 

 where they were used to hunt the wild boar and 

 the wolf, that existed in great number in the large 

 forests. Here their descendants are still to be 

 found, though in the course of time they have 

 been so much crossed with other breeds that they 

 have lost the distinctive features of the race. 

 They have become light and fast, and in this 

 respect are, as M. le Comte le Conteulx le Can- 

 teleu tells us, exactly the reverse of what they 

 were in the time of King Charles IX. That 

 monarch, who loved a gallop in the field, made 

 the well-known reproach to the bloodhounds of 

 his day, that " they were more suited for men who 

 had the gout than for those who wanted to kill 

 their stag." 



Yet the bloodhound as we have it in England 

 can go a great pace, and one of the best forty-five 

 minutes I have ever had in the Vale was with 

 Lord Wolverton's pack. It was in the early 

 'Seventies, when we met at Hayes on the 8th of 

 April, that this glorious gallop took place. In 



