14 
Beagles and Beagling 
hound's status at the present time, for while it may 
appear to be more erudite to endeavor to establish 
these claims to the animal’s great antiquity, I do 
not see what benefit it is to the owner living in the 
twentieth century, for in the final analysis, no proofs 
have ever been forthcoming to show that the dogs 
of King Canute’s times were the same as the beagle 
of later days. The name, beagle, as a matter of 
fact, is of French origin from the corrupted word 
“beigle,” meaning small. 
Coming down to later days, “Idstone" mentions 
a number of good packs of his day, in his book, 
“The Dog,” published in 1872, and we may draw 
the inference from his and other writers of the 
mid-Victorian period, that owners of these little 
hounds bred for purity of type and breed charac¬ 
teristics. It was much the same with the beagle 
in England, as with foxhounds or bird dogs. 
Every country estate which kept the breed at all, 
confined the breeding operations within it own lines, 
thus, the various strains were well established by the 
time they began to be recognized as a breed in 
this country. 
The writer previously mentioned, alludes to one 
pack as follows: “One pack I remember belonged 
to a very large, lame wine merchant; it may be 
observed that men of great size generally affect the 
most diminutive dogs which they can find. He had 
ten couples varying from about iy/2 inches down 
to 11 inches in height." 
Farther on he cites a pack that was broken to 
the gun, which was evidently more or less of a 
novelty in those days (Idstone’s Book was published 
