. OUNDS form a very large section of the dog family, as the term embraces all dogs which follow game either by sight or by scent. Of the former section the leading member of the present time is the greyhound, and has as its consorts the Irish wolfhound, the Scottish deerhound and the Russian wolfhound. To these may be added the later-made breed for racing and rabbit coursing, called the whippet or snap dog. Of the hounds that follow the quarry by scent we have the bloodhound, foxhound, harrier, beagle and basset; and up to a short time ago there was another variety of large fox- hound called t
. OUNDS form a very large section of the dog family, as the term embraces all dogs which follow game either by sight or by scent. Of the former section the leading member of the present time is the greyhound, and has as its consorts the Irish wolfhound, the Scottish deerhound and the Russian wolfhound. To these may be added the later-made breed for racing and rabbit coursing, called the whippet or snap dog. Of the hounds that follow the quarry by scent we have the bloodhound, foxhound, harrier, beagle and basset; and up to a short time ago there was another variety of large fox- hound called the staghound or buckhound, which was used in deer hunting, such as the Royal hunt after carted deer, or after wild deer in some of the still remaining sections of England where they were to be found. The Royal buckhounds were given up some years ago and the carted-deer hunts having fallen into disrepute as had the annual cockney Epping Hunt. Stag- hounds are not a breed of to-day nor, indeed, are harriers to the extent they were. The harrier is the intermediate dog between the foxhound and the beagle and has been interbred at each end, so that we have foxhound-har- riers and beagle-harriers; and the old type of true harrier is confined to a very few English hunts and is not in any sense an American breed, though some small foxhounds in Canada are called harriers or "American fox- hounds" as the owner pleases. Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton Smith, whose researches into the origin of the dog and the individual breeds have never been properly recognised by modern writers, to whom his work seems to have been unknown, devoted much attention to the question of the early hounds. When he wrote re- garding ancient dogs researches in Assyria had not progressed so far as they had in Egypt, and he was only aware of one representation of a long-eared dog, the others being erect-eared. He was therefore inclined to the opinion that the greyhound type was the older. Since his day, howev
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdogs, bookyear1906
