56 Beagles and Beagling 
work running on three legs than the coward with 
five legs. 
For the beginner, looking for an all-round utility 
dog, I should advocate a hound from fourteen to 
fifteen inches. This kind of a dog will do the work 
in rough country, on good days and bad, and he 
will he able to hunt dav after day, where the hills 
are rough, the cover is heavy and the briars are close. 
Another quality a good beagle should possess, 
and which is frequently overlooked by the beginner, 
is voice. Naturally, many who hunt for the mere 
sake of the game bag do not take these more 
esthetic points into consideration, but the true beagle 
fancier, the one who remains in the game year after 
year soon becomes more choice in his requirements 
in proportion as his love increases for his favorite 
breed of dog. Thus, the beginner, satisfied with 
any kind of a dog that will run rabbits, in time 
seeks for the finer, or as some call them, non-essen¬ 
tial qualities. Personally, I always felt that the 
voice of the hound or the harmony of the pack 
should be the most important feature. All of our 
old writers tell us that the beagle has the sweetest 
tongue of any of the hound family, but of late 
years, we cannot put all of our beagles in that class. 
.Speed has had something to do with loss of voice, 
perhaps, for in the effort to breed sprinters the voice 
has departed with some of the other hound proper¬ 
ties, and how often do we not find an array of 
squealers and screamers at a field trial! A writer 
of some years ago expressed it in proper terms when 
he said: “If Shakespeare had attended a field trial 
and heard a couple of such flyers in full cry, screech- 
