The statement about the particularly good scent of the white Hounds is very curious, for it is generally found that animals of light colour are inferior in sensory endowments to darker ones, owing to the absence of a peculiar black pigment from the delicate membranes to which the nerves of special sense are distributed. The pace of the Foxhound is very rapid. One was known to run a course of four miles one furlong and one hundred and thirty-two yards in a trifle over eight minutes! Of the correctness of their scent, no one who has seen the Hounds put off and watched the unerring way they pursue the Fox, can have any doubt. THE STAGHOUND. This is the largest of modern English Hounds, and the one which most nearly approaches in character the old “Hound” which fell into disuse on account of its slowness, but which we often find mentioned in olden writers. Shakspere, for instance, writes of this old English or Southern Hound in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”:-- _Hip._ I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem’d all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. _The._ My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee’d and dew-lapp’d, like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: Judge when you hear. Of the powers of scent possessed by the Staghound, the following is a notable example:-- “Lord Oxford reduced four Stags to so perfect a degree of submission, that, in his short excursions, he used to drive them in a phaeton made for the purpose. He was one day exercising his singular and beautiful steeds in the neighbourhood of Newmarket, when their ears were saluted with the unwelcome cry of a pack of Hounds, which, crossing the road in their rear, had caught the scent, and leaving their original object of pursuit, were now in rapid chase of the frightened Stags. In vain his grooms exerted themselves to the utmost; the terrified animals bounded away with the swiftness of lightning, and entered Newmarket at full speed. They made immediately for the Ram Inn, to which his lordship was in the habit of driving, and, having fortunately entered the yard without any accident, the stable-keepers huddled his lordship, the phaeton, and the Deer, into a large barn, just in time to save them from the Hounds, who came into the yard in full cry a few seconds afterwards.” THE BLOODHOUND.