DACHSHUNDS. 435 



DACHSHUNDS. 



Breeders should disabuse their minds of the popular but 

 erroneous notion that the crooked-legged Dachshund is the 

 only correct article, for it is not. Bow-legs are a deformity which 

 can be bred out in course of time by selection of pups with 

 straightest legs. More attention is now paid to their cultivation 

 in this country than ever before. When the Dachshunds are 

 employed in deer-driving, many of the objections to hounding 

 will disappear. On account of their slow pace the game does 

 not run wild, but moves gradually before it, and the hunter can 

 easily follow on foot. 



Herr F. Van Ivernois' edition of DerWaidmann, Bavaria, says: 



" What they call in Bavaria " dachshunds " are the most dis- 

 gusting dogs I know of. Since the first of January I have killed 

 two and wounded three, and I pay to every one of my game- 

 keepers, two thalers for the tail, which he must bring as a token 

 that he shot him. 



Every peasant here has one or two of these abominable curs, 

 (vhich follow them when plowing and driving, and which, as soon 

 as they get on the track of a roebuck, deer or hare, chase him, 

 ' pif paf ! pif paf ! ' all through the wood, and so disturbing the 

 game. These beasts ! (the noble name dog is too good for them) 

 spoil the shooting grounds so much that I, for instance, have on 

 my five different reviers (shooting grounds) not more than about 

 seven or eight coveys of partridge, and altogether I have the hunt- 

 ing on over 46,000 Prussian chargen — deer, roebucks, and chamois 

 are abundant, nevertheless. Wliat they call here dachshunds are 

 as far distant from a good dachshund as a donkey from a Gladi- 

 ateur, or any pretty good thoroughbred horse. They are too large 

 and high, show marks from all kinds of dogs, butcher-dogs, poodles, 

 rat-catchers, etc., with which their mothers have been in love ; do 

 not go in the burrow of a fox (the only thing for which one ought 

 to use a dachshund), have no obedience, and are only fit for dis- 

 turbing the game, and making 'pif paf! ' behind a roebuck, and 

 to hunt him until he is almost dead." 



In the London Field we find a long treatise on this dog, frorr 

 which we quote the following : 



This dog is generally considered in Germany to be a pure ana 

 independent breed, for a long time confined to the mountain chain 

 and high forests of Southern and Central Europe, extending 

 through Germany and into France, where he is probably the orig- 

 inal of the basset ajambes torses. The old English turnspit some- 



