26 DOMESTICATED DOGS. 
with suspicion on that account their presence to any remarkable 
extent, preferring a moderately hard but short coat, generally 
diffused over the whole body except the belly, and protecting it 
from wet and cold. 
Having now considered in detail the formation of every part of 
the body, it may impress their peculiar shapes upon the mind of 
the tyro if the old doggerel rhymes of the fifteenth century’s date 
are once more quoted, subject to the modification which I have 
already suggested— 
“The head of a snake, 
The neck of a drake, 
A back like a beam, 
A side like a bream, 
The tail of a rat, 
And the foot of a cat.” 
Up to within the last thirty years each coursing district had 
its peculiar breed of greyhounds, best suited to the country over 
which it was used. Thus the Newmarket country required a fast 
and yet stout greyhound to run over its flats, great part of which 
was arable land, with coverts two or three miles apart. The 
undulating downs of Wiltshire and Berkshire, again, being almost 
entirely of grass, allowed a smaller and somewhat slower dog to 
succeed better than a larger and faster one over plough, which 
could not get up the severe slopes of Beacon Hill at Amesbury, 
or even the lower ones constantly met with at Ashdown, from 
Compton Bottom and other spots favoured in the memory of the 
courser. In Lancashire, again, the courses until lately were 
seldom severe, partly from the nature of the food of the hares, 
and partly from the short distance to covert. But now-a-days all 
this is altered, and a two or three mile course may be reckoned 
on at Altcar or Southport almost as certainly as at Ashdown or 
Newmarket, partly from the better feeding of the hares and partly 
from the introduction of fresh blood through the hares of the latter 
counties. As a consequence of these changes, and of the facilities 
afforded by the railways to the breeders of all parts of the country, 
such an interchange of these breeds has taken place that there is 
really no locality in which a strain peculiar to itself can be said 
to exist. Whether we take “Master M‘Grath,” as representing 
