428 
pleasure both in the house and in the field. 
His board bill is not a large one, and his 
size is such that he can be stowed away, by 
the half dozen, under the seats of a wagon. 
His game is always plentiful. Partridge, 
grouse, prairie chicken, duck, pigeon, 
plover, goose or turkey may be extinct 
but the little brown bunny, like the sparrow, 
is ever with us. Foxes, wolves, wild-cats, 
mink, deer, bear, moose and elk may have 
departed for wilder and freer parts, but the 
rabbit lives on under the bramble bush, 
always there to afford a good day’s sport to 
the beagler. 
No one, however, will gainsay that bench 
shows and field trials have added much to 
the popularity of this breed. Rawdon Lee, 
in his admirable work, ‘‘Modern Dogs,” 
says of the beagle: ‘This is perhaps the 
only variety of hound that has profited by 
the institution of bench shows. He has done 
this because he is small and affectionate, 
pretty and docile, and in many respects 
admirably suited to be a ‘pet dog.’ Un- 
fortunately, he is so true to his instinct of 
hunting the rabbit, and even the hare, as 
to prove a nuisance, rather than otherwise, 
especially in country places, where his 
melodious bell-like voice will be continually 
heard in the coverts.” 
The beagle is of all sporting dogs the most 
tireless in his pursuit of game, and he will 
make but an indifferent pet, unless removed 
from all opportunity for hunting. The 
earliest records, however, lay claim for 
him as a pet. A Boston writer claims that 
two thousand years ago the lap dog of the 
Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, was a beagle. 
This is improbable, as is the story of their 
being hunted by the old Saxon king of 
England, Canute. More substantial is the 
claim that they were known in the days of 
the early Norman kings, when the strict 
game laws, made largely to protect the 
king’s deer, prohibited the common people 
from keeping the larger hounds. It is now 
generally accepted that the beagle was 
originally bred, by selection, from the talbot, 
or old English foxhound, though there is 
much mystery as to their exact origin. 
That the breed is of great antiquity there is 
no doubt, for Chaucer, Shakespeare and 
early writers on¥sporting subjects refer to 
them in very unmistakable terms. Queen 
RECREATION 
Elizabeth is said to have had a pack of 
pocket, or, as they were then called, glove 
beagles, so small as to permit one to rest in 
comfort in a lady’s gauntlet. If this is to be 
taken literally, the beagles must have been 
considerably smaller in the days of “good 
Queen Bess,” or the court beauties must 
have had amazingly large hands. From 
Elizabeth’s time, we hear but little of the 
miniature hounds until the days of William 
III, who owned a fine pack. It is said that 
this monarch hunted these hounds, in 1695, 
when on a visit to Welbeck, accompanied 
by a mounted company of four hundred 
gentlemen, which shows that beagling 
methods have been as completely revolu- 
tionized as the other sports. 
Coming down to a more recent date, 
George IV had his picture painted with a 
pack of beagles that would pass muster 
under the most hypercritical of the bench 
judges of to-day, Colonel Thornton paid 
the beagles of his day a high compliment, 
for, in spite of their small size, he found a 
hunter more useful in following them than 
a pony. Colonel Hardy had a pack during 
the closing years of the eighteenth century, 
which history says were so small that they 
could be carried from place to place, on the 
back of a pony, in large pack baskets. 
About this time, if report be true, there 
was a Strain of pure white beagles, in the 
south of England, particularly noted for 
their diminutiveness. 
The first beagles brought to this country 
probably came with some _ sport-loving 
Englishman, who had learned to appreciate 
the merry little hound with the bell-like 
voice in his native country. However, but 
little is known of the advent of the breed 
into the United States. Prior to the early 
seventies, before the bench shows had 
taught dog lovers that looks do count for 
something, our beagles were of a leggy, snip- ~ 
nosed, short-eared, hound-marked, dachs- 
hunde type still seen in out-of-the-way 
parts of the South. About 1870 General 
Rowett, of Carlinsville, Ill., founded his 
famous pack, which was the real fountain- 
head of the well-bred and typical beagle in 
America. Other men who were most instru- 
mental, either by their importations or 
breeding operations, in establishing the 
breed in the country are: Pottinger Dorsey 
