Type and Standard of the Beagle 
131 
never be a concensus of opinion upon the different 
values of a standard. ‘A’ judges St. Bernards; he 
must have type, extreme quality, markings and all 
that go to make a good St. Bernard head, and if 
a dog is able to round the ring without falling over, 
he’ll get the prize, sure, provided he has the requi¬ 
site head properties. Next show comes along ‘B’, 
a judge who believes head properties, markings, 
type, etc., easy enough to breed, sound legs and 
active movement are the sine qua nous he must look 
out for, and if he does not take care ‘B’ will do 
more harm than good, however requisite it is that 
these particular dogs should have better ‘under¬ 
standings.’ 
“Standards scale the value of points and their 
numbers show their relative value, but how many 
jud ges are there in America today, that if tackled 
in the ring, could give tables of point values cor¬ 
rectly, or even approximately of the majority of 
the breeds they handle? Still this should be, in 
mv estimation, the basis of a true judge's capa¬ 
bilities. In my idea, a true judge is one who, mind¬ 
ful of the standard, weighs each point in its proper 
relation to the whole. A woman may have beautiful 
eyes, but if she has a flat nose and a humpback, she 
does not appeal to one as a handsome woman. It is 
not from the super-excellence of any one point that 
breeders evolve perfection. It is rather from the 
selection of animals that, not superlatively good in 
one point, are good all round. How often do you 
hear some judge, when questioned as to his decision, 
on say a fox terrier, to make it easy, and it is pointed 
out to him how large the dog’s ears are, how full 
