1874.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
451 
The Badger Hound, or Basset. 
When we advocate, as we have often done, 
stringent dog-laws and their strict enforcement, 
it is not from any antipathy to dogs. There 
are dogs and dogs, and we make a distinction. 
That some dogs 
are not only pleas¬ 
ant and compan¬ 
ionable, but highly 
useful, we have no 
more doubt than 
that the great ma¬ 
jority are useless 
and injurious, and 
should be taxed 
out of existence. 
Upon a farm, espe¬ 
cially, a good dog 
is valuable, and if 
its value includes 
an ability to aid its 
master in hunting, 
all the better, for 
there are many 
more farmers who 
need the recrea¬ 
tion that hunting 
affords, than there 
are those who neg¬ 
lect their duties 
and waste their 
time with the gun. 
Believing in the 
utility of some dogs, we regard the introduction 
of a new and meritorious breed as a matter of 
sufficient interest to give a portrait of a Badger 
hound, which is sufficiently rare in this country 
to be regarded as new, as there is only a small 
pack of them owned by a German gentleman 
in Hoboken, N. J., and a few others scattered 
about the country. This dog is known to the 
Germans as Dachshund, or badger hound, and 
to the French as Basset, and if we accept the 
descriptions given by writers of both these 
nationalities, it 
possesses a re¬ 
markable combi¬ 
nation of excel¬ 
lencies. There are 
two divisions of 
the breed, those 
with straight and 
those with crook¬ 
ed legs, the last- 
named being pre¬ 
ferred. The gen¬ 
eral appearance of 
this dog is not 
prepossessing; as 
Gayot, the great 
French authority, 
remarks, it is more 
strange than grace¬ 
ful; the head is 
long and pointed 
at the muzzle, and 
the ears very long, 
so that when the 
animal is running 
they touch the 
ground; the neck 
is thick, body 
long, and the tail long and slender; the 
legs are remarkably short in proportion to 
the body, the fore-legs being singularly bowed, 
while then- large feet turn outward; the hair 
is short, and usually with brown or black 
markings on a white ground. On account of 
their shortness of limb, these dogs are only 12 
to 16 inches high, and for the same reason they 
run slowly, and the hunter can keep up with 
them without difficulty. Their expression of 
countenance is peculiar, it being an oldish 
and at the same time attentive look. They 
yellow-breasted rail. —{Porzana Novehoraccnsis.) 
have a keen scent, and in Europe are used for 
hunting almost all kinds of game, especially 
rabbits and deer, and such is their courage that 
they will even attack the wild boar. They are 
regarded as especially valuable in destroying 
all animals that are injurious to the farmer. 
---——® ---- 
The Yellow Breasted Rail. 
One of our associates having had the good 
fortune to bag a Yellow-breasted Rail, we 
THE BADGER HOUND, DACHSHUND, OR BASSET. 
• 
have had an engraving made of the speci¬ 
men. Those interested in birds, either as 
objects of natural history or as game, will be 
glad to know something of this, one of the 
rarest of all .Northern birds, and we give the 
following account of it, mainly from notea 
furnished by the friend who shot the specimen. 
Naturalists at present separate the Rails into 
two genera, the old genus Rallus, including the 
Virginia, the Clapper, and the King Rails, while 
the common Rail or Sora, the Black Rail, and 
the present species, are in the genus Porzana ; 
the specific name 
of this is JVovebo- 
racensis, which is 
rather a misnomer, 
as the bird is rare¬ 
ly found in New 
York. The follow¬ 
ing is the descrip¬ 
tion of this species: 
Upper parts dark 
ochre-yellow, with 
stripes of brown¬ 
ish black, and 
transverse stripes 
of white; neck 
and breast red¬ 
dish ochre-yellow, 
many of the feath¬ 
ers tipped with 
brown; middle of 
abdomen white; 
flanks and ventral 
regions having 
bands of dark red¬ 
dish brown, with 
bands of white 
crossing them; 
under tail .coverts 
reddish, with spots of white; chin white; 
thigh feathers blackish; line over the eye 
cinnamon brown; length from tip of bill 
to tail, about six inches. This, the smallest of 
the Rails, is so retiring in its habits, and skulks 
so persistently among the reeds and tall grass 
which border the water courses and drains of 
our meadows, that it is very rarely obtained, 
and therefore the least known of its kind. 
The writer, in an experience of twenty-three 
years’ shooting upon meadows and marshes, 
has obtained but 
two in all that 
time,and has heard 
of but two others 
“being shot, one at 
Gravesend, L. I., 
and the other on 
the salt meadows 
of the Hacken¬ 
sack, N. J. The 
Yellow - breasted 
Rail takes wing 
very reluctantly, 
and will only rise 
when hard pushed 
by the dog; it 
then flies but a 
few yards, with 
neck outstretched 
and legs hanging 
down, and soon 
drops among the 
tall reeds, where it 
runs with such 
amazing swiftness, 
that further pur¬ 
suit is useless. It 
is chiefly met with 
by Snipe shooters, when in pursuit of their favor¬ 
ite game. As this bird bears a considerable gen¬ 
eral resemblance to the European Quail, it was 
called by one naturalist (Latham) the Hudsonian 
Quail. It lays from ten to sixteen pure white 
eggs among the grass, making no nest—or at 
