Jan. 25, 18S6,j 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
77 
corporated with it, and bathing as it did the entire mucous 
surface the warts were cured. No fault to find with 
Hamden, but "every man to his own trade." 
Dr. W. H. Hacker. 
445 Westminster s tbeet, Providence, R I. 
FOOT BEAGLES. 
The decadence of this old English breed and its decline 
in popular estimation is a matter of real regret to all 
sportsmen who venerate and love and jealously preserve 
those national breeds which have helped to make our 
English sport what it is. The desire for "some new 
thing," so characteristic of the present age, has attracted 
into the ranks of the "Bssset hound fancy" many a young 
fellow, sound in legs and wind, to whom we should have 
looked as the natural supporter of our national breed; and 
a meretricious admiration has been inculcated for the 
foreign dog by the yard, with legs by the inch as crooked 
as art can make them, utterly opposed to an Englishman's 
idea of a hound in almost every particular. They are 
fashionable, and that is sufficient. It matters not that at 
every high bank or thick fence the entire pack await the 
panting master to lift them over or to take them round by 
an easier path to try and regain a scent left to cool until 
convenient to begin hunting again. 
But the beagle has suffered also from the modern desire 
for pace; the old love of seeing these little hounds work- 
ing out the scent for themselves perseveringry, musically, 
slowly, but very surely, over a bit of plow or on a bit of 
dry road, has been quite replaced by a frantic desire to 
"get on and kill," "keep up the average," and show to the 
field that the master "knows how to kill his hare." In 
consequence the size of the hounds has been increased, 
pace is bred for, and a modern pack "go off" in a manner 
which destroys all pleasure for foot-hunters, and renders 
necessary the presence of at least one horseman in the 
company; so the proceedings are voted "rather dull." It 
is true that, thanks to the hare, the pack will surely come 
again to those who know how to wait; but as most of the 
pretty pieces of work and exhibition of hound cleverness 
take place out of sight, there is not much to recommend 
the modern beagle pack. The fall is between two stools. 
A field on foot see little except perhaps the find and the 
finish; a mounted field seldom get a good gallop, and often 
receive scant welcome from the sorely tried farmer. If 
hounds were kept only for their legitimate business all 
this would be altered. In large open tracts of country, 
where little damage can be done, much sport will be pro- 
vided by the speedy 17in. or 18in. harrier, and enjoyed 
by those whose means are too limited to allow of fox 
hunting, or whose increasing years warn them to take 
their pleasures more sedately. The true vocation, how- 
ever, of the beagle is quite different from that of the 
harrier; none but those who have tried it know the amount 
of sport which can be given by a little pack rigidly kept 
under 12in. On a burning scent, the strongest and the 
best must do all he knows to keep with them, but soon 
the hare gets far ahead, her scent gets colder and very 
catchy; real hound work now begins, and nothing can be 
more fascinating than to watch a few couple of these 
clever miniature hounds working out for themselves a 
solution of the great problem. Seldom, indeed, should 
the master interfere with beagles; it rarely helpB them 
much; they are self-opinionated little personages, entirely 
devoted to the scent, and so long as a particle is left, "a 
lift" is not a proceeding for which they are thankful; it 
often takes a considerable time to again get them on a line 
once their own plans have been upset by human interfer- 
ence. Besides, it should be remembered our object is not 
the same as in fox hunting; we are out for a good healthy 
run across country, young men and maidens, old men and 
children, to enjoy the pleasure of seeing beautiful little 
hounds hunting every yard of a run; watching what they 
will make of that bit of plow, how they will work that 
hedge row, race over the meadow, pick it up again in the 
lane; notice what a good voice that puppy will have, and 
how well that first season hound worked in the turnip 
field; observe how cute old Melody is hitting off the line 
on that main road just when we were giving it up in 
despair, and we are all there to see it, every bit of it; then 
before we get cold, a fresh burst of music, a touch of the 
horn, and we are off again. Very possibly we return 
without our hare, but we have had what we wanted, a 
good run, have got up a healthy glow, and have done 
much to dissipate many of the ills to which our flesh is 
heir. At very slight expense we have provided amuse- 
ment for the young and old alike, without doing a bit of 
harm to our neighbors' crops, hedges or gates. 
But supposing there are no hares? Still can we get real 
fun out of our miniature pack; only in this case our hounds 
must be reduced in size to still smaller dimensions, and we 
must try to obtain what used to be called the sleeve, pocket 
or toy beagle, which should never exceed lOin. By care- 
fully netting a few rabbits, and turning them down quite 
uninjured in a field of roots or a hedge row far from their 
usual haunts, an afternoon's excellent sport will be ob- 
tained. Giving bunny twenty minutes' law to shake off 
any feeling of stiffness or fright and enable him to take 
stock of the new country, we bring up the toys. Let 
them find him, hunt him, kill him if they can, all by 
themselves. You are not there to kill the rabbit, but to 
see your toy hounds hunt him like a little pack of tigers 
with a burst of music which will often put to shame the 
local pack of foxhounds. However small our hounds, there 
is no danger of the field getting cold. Short sharp bursts, 
then a pretty bit of slow hunting, up jumps bunny again, 
down the hedgerow, through and out of sight, but lay for- 
ward for another burst, the little toys working like demons 
after the excitement of their "view." Many a corner 
you will have to cut if you wish to be always there, even 
with these hounds; but the rules of the game must be 
observed. See that your rabbit is perfectly uninjured 
before he is turned out. Give him a fair start, i. e., no 
shaking out of a bag in front of the hounds, make them 
find him. Do not cramp your rabbit up in a small box 
or dark bag for twenty-four hours before expecting him 
to run. Do not help your pack; bunny is sufficiently 
handicapped by the strangeness of his surroundings. Do 
not let your hounds exceed lOin. Then even rabbit 
hunting will give you and your friends many an hour's 
amusement and drive away many an ache and pain. In 
the sporting world what can exceed the beauty of a well- 
bred pack of these beautiful little toys busy at work? See 
them picking up the line over the grass field— sterns lash- 
ing with excitement, coats shining like satin, the brilliant 
black, white and tans, the favorite blue mottle, the som- 
ber hare color, the lively tan and whites of various shades 
— all blending together in one harmonious whole. "Toys" 
they may be, but they seem terribly in earnest about the 
business on hand, and Mr. Cony must look very sharp if 
he means to run again another day, even although you 
should, be able, if the necessity arises, to carry home in 
the great coat pocket an average specimen from your 
pack. 
There is yet another use we can make of our miniature 
hounds. We all know the pleasure boys — and sometimes 
pretty old boys too — find in a paper chase. It seems 
natural for us to hunt something, if only our fellow 
creatures, laboriously marking out their steps with bits of 
paper. With a few "toy beagles" this fun and excite- 
ment can be increased tenfold, and a new joy found for 
the Christmas holidays. Give an active boy fifteen min- 
utes' start with a rabbit skin attached to a piece of string, 
his orders being to keep it on the ground, but to twist and 
double and cause all the difficulties he can invent. Then 
put on your hounds; however small, they will soon give 
the best among you enough to do, and it will be real hunt- 
ing with cheery music. The master must be a good goer on 
his own legs, always with his hounds, watching and legiti- 
mately helping them when help is required, for our little 
pack have to comppte now with human intelligence, and 
many a useful lesson may be learned, even when hunting 
a drag. 
Again, if within our shooting rights we have patches of 
gorse holding rabbits, nothing can be better than a few 
couple of small beagles; they will creep about through the 
smallest rabbit runs, and sooner or later force every rab- 
bit in the patch to face the gun posted half way between 
that and the next. A burst of music coming nearer and 
nearer will warn you to be ready and quick, for the pace 
at which bunny will make for his new haven renders his 
death by no means a certainty, even with an experienced 
shot. 
Having tired of rabbits, we can go and try for that old 
cock pheasant in the copse; our "toys" will hunt him with 
equal joy, and eventually force him up when they have 
driven him to the corner, where a gun awaits him, or 
should await him, for this combined hunting and shooting 
requires some activity in order to be at the right spot, 
guided by the music of your pack, and you may be kept 
running backward and forward for half an hour before 
the old cock will condescend to rise, which he generally 
does when you least expect him to do so. 
Yet, with all this fun to be obtained out of "toy 
beagles," the true breed has become nearly extinct; but 
the formation of a pack, the breeding difficulties to be 
overcome, the various types of beagle now existing, and 
the true type at which we should aim ought to be dis- 
cussed. — Breeder, in London Field. 
Pace in Shooting: Dogs. 
Waverlt, Miss.— Editor Forest and Stream: In a 
recent issue of Forest and Stream I noticed that very 
sensibly written article of Capt. McMurdo's undtr the 
above caption. 
The Captain's position is well taken, as my observation 
has been that it is not always the fastest dog that is the 
most effective bird finder. 
Pace is necessary when it is regulated to within the 
compass of the possessor's endurance ; but if a dog uses 
his greatest efforts to maintain the high rate of speed of 
which he may be capable, he is apt to select ground as 
free from obstructions as possible in order that he may go 
as fast as he wants to, and his thoughts are not on finding 
birds when racing in such a frivolous manner. 
Speed is something that can be spared to a greater ex- 
tent than any other quality possessed by a first-class dog, 
and my experience is the same as the Captain's, namely, 
that wherever a dog is very, very fast, in the majority of 
cases he is not a first- class bird dog. 
A dog with the proper stay-out qualities, and whose 
pace is uniform, will search out a larger scope of country, 
and generally find more birds; for while the dog's pace 
is sufficient to enable him to hunt the country within a 
reasonable distance by systematically beating it out with 
good judgment, and with as little tax on his endurance 
as would be necessary, he also does it in a more thor- 
ough manner, going well up into corners of every field, 
and often by his more leisurely methods getting scent 
and finding birds where his more speedy competitor 
passed by too hurriedly to be successful. 
It is really surprising how little speed is needed to cover 
as much country as is needed when the dog stays out and 
loses no time in passing in and out, keeping track of his 
handler, avoiding getting lost by not casting too far out 
of the reach of the gun, not running himself down, and 
then taxing his already exhausted condition by racing 
hither and all over the country to find his master. A 
stay-out dog never does this ; he hunts out the country as 
he comes to it, and does so in such a thorough manner 
that he finds all the birds possible to find, generally 
showing himself at stated intervals on some knoll or rise 
just long enough to be directed or to see if you are still 
pursuing the same course. 
Such dogs add much pleasure to a day's hunt. To 
begin with, at the start they are not racing or keeping 
their owners constantly on the alert to make them remain 
at heel. They either take a position at heel or calmly 
saunter along the side of the road, investigating such 
matters from time to time as generally interest a passing 
dog. 
A dog should be a clean gallopar, and his pace should 
be natural enough to need no great effort on the dog's 
part to maintain it. He should carry a high head and 
pay no attention to any scent that was not strong enough 
to allow him to determine the whereabouts and location 
of the bodies that produced it, unless of such nature he 
could by good judgment road to his birds. 
It has always been a mystery to me why spectators at a 
field trial always manifest more enthusiasm over a point 
made by a dog that jumps right into it than one with less 
snap, but made through a good nose and good judgment 
in following up a faint scent until the birds could be 
located. 
A dog that jumps into a point looks pretty, I admit. 
His posture is unstudied and apt to be more spirited, but 
the very evidence of his surprise, manifested by his 
actions in pointing, shows the scent was met abruptly 
and unexpectedly, and all he did was what any good dog 
should do, and that was to point. In other words, the 
find was accidental in one sense, while in another he 
was hunting out the country with the object of finding 
birds in view. 
Still, at the same time, the birds were right there ready 
to be pointed and he could not escape pointing any other 
way than by flushing them. It is a different matter 
when you see a dog cast down into a ravine getting the 
wind at a certain point from a bevy on the opposite side 
of it perhaps. The moment the dog passes below the 
scent, loses it and casts back, strikes, but loses it again; he 
casts down the ravine and up, but being too low fails to 
get the scent, then swinging up the opposite side-hill a 
passing air brings to his delicate nostrils a faint indica- 
tion of the scource of the scent. With head high in the 
air he gallops up nearer and nearer, until the gallop sub- 
sides into a trot, the trot into a walk, and presently, with 
head erect and tail quivering with delight as he daintily 
poses it in a graceful attitude, he stops, having found and 
pointed birds that could only have been found through 
his judgment and bird sense. 
A very fast dog would have passed without noticing it 
the slight scent that he caught in descending the hillside, 
and unless he had cast to the right place on the hill oppo- 
site where the bevy was, he would not have found them. 
The point I wish to make is that the dog that did find 
them would also have jumped into the point as the other 
dog did, had he come on to birds unexpectedly, which a 
dog doesn't often do when he is always looking for birds. 
A dog can be moderate in pace, have a good nose, 
plenty of bird sense and judgment enough to "stay out" 
and keep hunting, and at the end of a day's hunt he will 
be doing effective work, while his speedier compan- 
ion will have shot his bolt long before and only be able 
to keep up with the procession without hunting — which 
means "at heel." - W. W. Titus. 
The Bull-Terrier Club of America. 
Pittsburg, Pa.— Editor Forest and Stream: At a 
meeting of the executive committee of the Ball-Terrier 
Club of America, held in Pittsburg, Jan. 13, the following 
resolutions were adopted : 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the executive com- 
mittee of the Bull-Terrier Club of America that, although 
Mr. Paper is perfectly satisfactory as a judge to the Bull- 
Terrier Club, still as matter of precpdent, we, the execu- 
tive committee of the Bull-Terrier Club, wish to notify all 
kennel clubs holding bench shows at which we offer 
specials that we would deem it an act of courtesy to our- 
selves to have such clubs, if they do not select a judge 
from our list, to at least consult us as to whom they will 
have judge the breed. 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the executive com- 
mittee of the Bull-Terrier Club of America, that Dr. H. T. 
Foote and Mr. H. F. Schellhass, by their persistent and 
unreasoning assaults on the practice of cropping and on 
those who practice it, have constituted themselves ene- 
mies of the Bull-Terrier Club of America; and that the 
said Dr. H. T. Foote, by his proposal to disqualify all dogs 
not in "a natural condition," is assuming a hostile posi- 
tion toward the exhibition of spaniels, fox-terriers, 
poodles, great Danes, bull-terriers, Boston terriers and 
black and tan terriers, and is hereby hostile to the Amer- 
ican Kennel Club, which is maintained for the advance- 
ment of all canine interests regardless of breeds; and, be 
it further resolved that a copy of these resolutions be 
sent to Dr. Foote, Mr. Schellhass and the American Ken- 
nel Club; also the various press mediums for publication. 
The following specials will be given by the Bull-Ter- 
rier Club of America at the Westminster Kennel Club 
bench show: Club's silver medals for best dog and bitch 
in open class over 301bs. ; club's silver medals for best dog 
and bitch in open class under 30 lbs. To be competed for 
by members of club only. W. D. Brereton, Sec'y. 
The Status of Field Trials. 
Waverly, Miss.— The papers have not male the effort 
for field trial prominence in their columns for the past 
several years that has been necessary, and many of the 
comments and criticisms, while merited as applied to the 
individuals for whom intended, yet they have been accept 
ed by the public as representing the general tenor of field 
trial goers, and the result has been a falling off of interest 
in field trials. It is impossible for the public to know 
anything about field trials, except what they read, unless 
informed by a friend who has been present, or by being 
present themselves. 
When non-field trial goers ask a party who is going, 
"What he is going down among that crowd of wranglers 
and mud slingers for?" it would be very interesting to 
know through what influence or medium of information 
he arrived at such opinion of field trials in general. 
If he gets his impressions from what he reads in the 
sporting journals, then those papers, instead of being a 
benefit to field trial interests by reporting matters as 
they are, have been a detriment by prejudicing sportsmen 
who probably would enjoy field trial sports if they would 
only go and see for themselves. A public press is a great 
blessing, but too close a scrutiny of matters to be made 
public cannot exist. 
. Public sentiment in such matters generally represents 
pretty fairly the views in general regarding it, and I have 
never in all my recollection heard so many harsh com- 
ments as I have in the last three months. 
A party with a grievance is always to be found in any 
description of competitive contest I have ever witnessed, 
from the insipid game of croquet all along the line, not 
even expecting yacht racing. It is time when that char- 
acter of men seeks the public journals for means of airing 
their "grievances" that they should furnish the best of 
proof that what they accuse of is so, and unless they can 
do so refuse point blank to publish their communications. 
I know the stand taken by Forest and Stream, and I am 
glad to see the matter being treated heroically by others. 
It is no doubt but what this style of field trial criticism 
is harmful. It gives the impression as it exists in the brain 
of the disappointed competitor, and oftener by those 
who were not present and make the complaint on hear- 
say without first hearing the other side. W. W. Titus. 
Game Laws in Brief. 
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new game and fish laws for more than thirty of the States. It covers 
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