The Bloodhound. 
45 
price. Mr. Jesse, in his History of the British Bog, has 
drawn largely upon the pages of this pamphlet, which is 
indeed the chief authority on the subject. 
The translator, in his preface, informs his readers that 
this little treatise was written by Dr. Caius at the request 
of Conrad Gesner, a Swiss naturalist, one of the most 
learned men of his time. 
The most formidable of our English dogs was the 
Bloodhound. This dog was sometimes called 
limier, or limehound, from the leash, lyme, Bloodll<raild * 
or line, by which he was held while tracking the deer. 
He was employed to find the stag, but did not as a rule 
run with the pack. His superior sense of smell made 
him the most valuable addition to a hunting establish¬ 
ment. Dr. Caius distinguishes between the bloodhound 
and the limier. According to him the limier was a 
hound remarkable for quick running as well as for his 
scent, in size between a harrier and a greyhound. Other 
names for the bloodhound were slough, sleuth, slow, or 
slug hound; he was not unfrequently employed for 
tracing thieves and cattle-stealers through the mosses 
and bogs, impassable save to those intimately acquainted 
with them. Mr. Jesse quotes from JSTicolson and Burn’s 
History of the Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland, 
published 1777, a warrant, dated September, 1616, from 
Sir Wilfride Lawson and Sir William Hutton, two of his 
Majesty’s commissioners for the government of the middle 
shires of Great Britain, to the garrison of Carlisle, 
ordering that in consequence of the numerous robberies 
slough dogs should be provided, and kept at the charge 
of the inhabitants, at nine parishes in the neighbourhood 
of the Marches. A more formidable ally could scarcely 
be given to a pursuer. 
Shakspeare has only one allusion to this variety by 
name: “ Ay, come, you starved blood-hound ” (2 Henry 
IV., v. 4, 31). Ben Jonson writes, “A good bloodhound, 
