THE BLOODHOUND. 231 



own children with them ; I have his word for it, I am certain 

 that it is. true, and I need scarcely add that it involves no risk." 

 I will now turn to modern bloodhounds that have come 

 ■within the range of my own observation. The first are those 

 belonging to the late Mr. Thomas Nevill of Chilland, near Win- 

 chester, Hants, who had some considerably over thirty years ago. 

 The first were procured from the I^ew Forest — unless I am 

 mistaken, from one of the keepers named Primmer, a dog and a 

 bitch — and these were the foundation of the pack of which Mr. 

 Nevill retained the blood to the time of his death, although by 

 selection he has considerably altered them from what is noAV 

 considered the true bloodhound type. I remember the first he 

 had well, although I was then very young ; the dog, called Eufus, 

 was almost entirely black, Avith merely tan markings on the legs, 

 and spots over the eyes, the same as is seen in black and tan ter- 

 riers ; the bitch was a rich deep tan, the same as we generally see 

 in shows, running into black in the shape of a saddle-mark along 

 the back and sides. They were both rather rough-tempered, and 

 the bitch exceedingly shy and timid in the presence of strangers. 

 Mr. Kevill has since bred to the colour of the dog Eufus, and 

 to the last his pack were marked as he was, but of even a deeper, 

 richer black. Of course this has been a work of great time, and 

 for years most of them came of the ordinary bloodhound colour, 

 while the blacker ones were frequently ticked with very small 

 white spots — one I remember so much so as to be almost grey. 

 His name was Norman — and a very good hound he proved — but 

 Mr. Nevill never used him on account of his colour, and I think 

 gave him away at last. Not many years ago I chanced to meet 

 with a keeper whose family had held a walk in the forest for 

 two or three hundred years, and I believe hold it still, when our 

 conversation turned on the bloodhounds, and he told me that 

 they kept a couple or more at each keeper's lodge, for the purpose 

 of recovering w^ounded bucks, that the hounds had been in the 

 keepers' hands from generation to generation, and that they 

 called them " Talbots." His father, he told me, had a very 



