228 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
and, in a word, all the peculiarities of the Southern hounds 
and Talbots were comparative—it is easy to conceive, that, 
when in process of time the clearing up of the forests and 
other causes rendered a swifter hound desirable, those ani- 
mals should be chosen from which to raise stock, possess- 
ing the points of speed, lightness, and activity, rather 
than those of strength, endurance, and even of pre-eminent 
scent. There were undoubtedly also white Talbots and 
even white bloodhounds, though these were rare, and it is 
possible that the prevalence of that color in the fleet 
modern hounds, may arise from a casual coincidence of 
color and fleetness in some pure ancestral strain. 
I confess, however, that I think it probable that there 
is a distant cross somewhere—perhaps through the North- 
ern hound, which Stonehenge states, as if with authority, 
to have been decidedly a cross of the Southern hound 
with the Scottish deerhound—of some slighter and faster 
strain, which may have imparted color as well as speed. 
The harrier—although it also has of late years under- 
gone much the same process of improvement, so that it 
has become in many instances little more than a dwarf 
foxhound, increase of speed having been sought at the 
expense of strength, to the overmatching of the hare and 
the deterioration of the sport—still retains more of the 
Southern hound, and shows the blood, both by its colors, 
the black and yellow pie and the blue mottle, and by its 
deep melodious challenge. 
The beagle, the smallest of the species, now used in Eng- 
land only to hunt rabbits, is a charming and beautiful little 
animal, being in fact a mere pocket edition of the South- 
