THE FOX-HOUND. 69 



Brocklesby crack, figured by Stubbs, as he bangs in the hunts- 

 man's house at Brocklesby Park, and say how far short he 

 falls of hounds in the present day. Moreover, let him then look 

 at the fox-hound bitch and pups, figured in Daniels's " Rural 

 Sports," published 1801, and say if the recent prize-winner 

 at the Peterborough Show can give her one ounce as regards 

 symmetry, quality, and appearance ; or, turning to Merkin in the 

 same volume, let me ask him if, in his experience, he has ever 

 seen a more powerful or grander bitch. Nay, were we to take the 

 fox-hounds figured in the latest edition of " Rural Sports", by 

 Stonehenge, and other works on the dog, as a comparison, should 

 we not say that we had fallen very far short of the old standard 1 

 But, happily for masters of hounds in general, and those from 

 whose hounds they were taken in particular, they do not repre- 

 sent the fox-hound as he is. 



Having thus endeavoured to show that we have improved 

 little or nothing in fox-hounds during the present century — for, 

 in spite of the assumed increase of speed, I do not believe that 

 hounds, in reality, go any faster now than then (if they did, race- 

 horses could not live with them), but that we are deluded into 

 the idea of their being faster, through a quicker style of hunting 

 them — I may now turn again to the origin of the fox-hound. 



Some pages back I said that, when men began to hunt the 

 fox, they found a hound already suitable for the purpose, who 

 had only to be entered to the new game. That hound was what 

 was known in the time of Gervase Markham as the northern 

 hound, who, no doubt, improved by careful breeding during the 

 last 200 years, now figures as the fox-hound. 



Tradition and popular belief says he is a cross of the 

 southern hound and the greyhound, or some other lighter dog. 

 Por my own part I see no reason to credit this, nor can I under- 

 stand why two or more sorts of hound may not have been co- 

 existent in England at one and the same time, in early ages as 

 now. If we, for argument sake — though I do not admit as a 

 fact — suppose the big, heavy dog, known as the southern hound, 



