Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

 

“Wolf-Hunting in Lower Brittany.”

     I was fortunate enough that night to sit next to the Count de Kergoorlas at dinner, and, hearing he was a master of wolf-hounds in Upper Brittany. I gleaned from him some interesting information with respect to the style of a hound he considered best adapted for his particular sport.

     A big, bold, broken-haired hound is what I kept for the work; and occasionally I invigorate the race, “with a strain of wolfblood.”

     “And how, pray,” I inquired, “do you manage that?”

     “Nothing is more simple. The dog and the wolf being cougeners, they breed readily together; nor does the law affecting mules affect the hybrid race, as the offspring of the first cross reproduce litters with thw same facility. I keep a dog-wolf brought up by hand; and he, suckled in infancy by a hound dam lives in perfect concord with any hounds I think fit to inclose with him in his kennel; while a day or two reconciles a strange hound to his company.”

     “And do you find the first cross,” I asked, “as manageable in chase as your ordinary hounds?”

     “Far from it,” he replied; insomuch that I only keep that produce to breed from. They usually run mute or all but mute, and are so self-willed in chase and so fierce in kennel that I merely use them as stud-hounds, and enter the second cross. These, the grand-offspring of the wolf, become rare wolf-hounds, fierce, desperate in chase, and never tiring during the longest day.”