--much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the
English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that
the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.

The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless
due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller
and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were
originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are
uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do
not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality.
Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white
markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all
packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound
lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound
is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.

There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American
type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter
seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in
the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since,
Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester,
Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side,
each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general
suitability of the American versus the English hound for American
country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and
Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.

In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been
organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase
Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are
members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in
Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts,
three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut,
Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan--the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit,
being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some
unrecognized hunting near Chicago.

An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States
and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales
alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles,
and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many a