keel.  LEGS AND FEET—­The fore-legs are straight and large in bone, with elbows squarely set; the feet strong and well knuckled up; the thighs and second thighs (gaskins) are very muscular; the hocks well bent and let down and squarely set.  BACK AND LOINS—­The back and loins are strong, the latter deep and slightly arched.  STERN—­The stern is long and tapering and set on rather high, with a moderate amount of hair underneath.  GAIT—­The gait is elastic, swinging, and free—­the stern being carried high, but not too much curled over the back.  COLOUR—­The colours are black-and-tan, red-and-tan, and tawny—­the darker colours being sometimes interspersed with lighter or badger-coloured hair and sometimes flecked with white.  A small amount of white is permissible on chest, feet, and tip of stern.

CHAPTER XIV

THE OTTERHOUND

The Otterhound is a descendant of the old Southern Hound, and there is reason to believe that all hounds hunting their quarry by nose had a similar source.  Why the breed was first called the Southern Hound, or when his use became practical in Great Britain, must be subjects of conjecture; but that there was a hound good enough to hold a line for many hours is accredited in history that goes very far back into past centuries.  The hound required three centuries ago even was all the better esteemed for being slow and unswerving on a line of scent, and in many parts of the Kingdom, up to within half that period, the so-called Southern Hound had been especially employed.  In Devonshire and Wales the last sign of him in his purity was perhaps when Captain Hopwood hunted a small pack of hounds very similar in character on the fitch or pole-cat; the modus operandi being to find the foraging grounds of the animal, and then on a line that might be two days old hunt him to his lair, often enough ten or twelve miles off.

When this sort of hunting disappeared, and improved ideas of fox-hunting came into vogue, there was nothing left for the Southern Hound to do but to hunt the otter.  He may have done this before at various periods, but history rather tends to show that otter-hunting was originally associated with a mixed pack, and some of Sir Walter Scott’s pages seem to indicate that the Dandie Dinmont and kindred Scottish terriers had a good deal to do with the sport.  It is more than probable that the rough-coated terrier is identical with the now recognised Otterhound as an offshoot of the Southern Hound; but be that as it may, there has been a special breed of Otterhound for the last eighty years, very carefully bred and gradually much improved in point of appearance.  They are beautiful hounds to-day, with heads as typical as those of Bloodhounds, legs and feet that would do for Foxhounds, a unique coat of their own, and they are exactly suitable for hunting the otter, as everyone knows who has had the enjoyment of a day’s sport on river or brook.