tinct parts, into a solid mass and into a fluid matter, in which the solid mass swims. The solid portion of the blood is termed the clot, or the crassamentum; the fluid portion is called the serum; and the process by which the separation takes place is denominated coagulation. The change in the constitution of the blood by which this separation into a solid and a fluid portion is effected, probably commences the very instant the blood leaves the blood-vessel. In the space of three minutes and a half it is sufficiently advanced to be manifest to the eye; in seven minutes the fluid is separated from the solid portion; while the change progressively advances until, in the space of from twe to twenty minutes, the separation may be said to be complete. The nature of this curious process is imperfectly understood. It is a process sui generis, there being no other with which we are acquainted perfectly analogous to it. It is really, as will be shown immediately, a process of death ; it is the mode in which the blood dies. A watery vapour, called the halitus, begins to arise from the blood the moment coagulation commences, and continues to issue from it until the termination of the process. The halitus consists of water containing some animal matter in solution. It possesses a very peculiar odour, and it is this which gives to the slaughter-house its characteristic taint. The clot or crassamentum, the solid part of the blood, further separates into two portions, a substance of a yellowish white colour forming the top of the clot, and a red mass always found at the bottom of the clot. When the yellowish substance forming the top of the clot is completely separated from the red mass, it is found to be a solid of considerable consistence, soft, firm, elastic, and tenacious, or gluey. Its distinctive character is derived from the disposition manifested by its component particles to arrange themselves into minute threads or fibres; these threads or fibres are often so disposed as to form a complete net-work. In its general aspect, as well as in its chemical relations, this substance bears a striking resemblance to pure muscular fibre; that is, to muscular fibre deprived of its enveloping membrane and of its colouring matter. Several names have been given to this substance, gluten, coagulable lymph, fibre of the blood, and fibrin; the latter is the name commonly appropriated to it. Of all the constituents of the blood fibrin is by far the most important. Whatever other constituent may be absent, this, in all animals which possess blood, is invariably present. The main part of all the solid structures of the body is composed of it: it forms the basis of muscle, and in the lower animals, in which distinct muscular fibres cannot be traced, it probably performs the function of muscle. The second constituent of the clot, the red matter, being heavier than the fibrin, gradually subsides to the lower surface, where, as has just been stated, it is always found forming the bottom of the clot. The proportion of this red matter to the fibrin differs exceedingly in different classes of animals, and even in the same animal at different times, the difference depending on circumstances mainly connected with the general health and vigour of the system. The greater the energy and activity of the animal, the larger is the proportion of this red matter, and it is also generally large in proportion to the elevation of the animal tempe rature. Considerable diversity of opinion prevails respecting the intimate nature of this constituent of the blood. What is certain is, that it is composed of innumerable minute particles which vary in size in different animals. It is universally admitted that these particles, minute as they are, are highly organized; but physiologists are not agreed respecting their structure. By some observers they are supposed to be formed of solid colourless nuclei enclosed in an external envelope of a red colour, to which the colour of the blood is owing. By others they are described as consisting of circular, flattened, and transparent cakes, which when seen singly appear to be nearly or quite colourless, but which assume a reddish tinge when aggregated in considerable masses. According to these physiologists, the edge of these cakes is rounded, and this being their thickest part, there is consequently a slight depression in the middle, on both surfaces. The familiar object which these bodies are conceived most nearly to resemble is a penny-piece, with its thickened margin and slightly concave surface. According to this account, the red particles are wholly des titute of an external envelope. Instead of consisting of a solid nucleus, inclosed in a red vesicle, the whole body is solid. The former opinion was that of the older physiologists, arrived at by an examination of the particles of the blood with the microscope, when this instrument was much less perfect than it is at present, and when the use of it was much less accurately understood. Mr. Lister, who has succeeded in effecting a considerable improvement in the microscope, and who, together with his friend Dr. Hodgkin, has examined the red particles of the blood with great care, describes them as flattened solid bodies without any membranous envelope. All observers are agreed that the size of these particles, as long as they retain unimpaired the form they possess on escaping from the blood-vessel, is perfectly uniform; but their real magnitude is variously estimated: the size of the red particle of the buman blood is, according to The red particles of the blood have a circular form in all the animals constituting the class mammalia, but in the three other classes of vertebrated animals, the fish, the reptile, and the bird, their figure is elliptical. The elliptical particles are larger than the circular, but proportionally thinner. They are larger in fishes than in any other animals, and the largest of all in the skate. They are far more numerous in the bird than in the reptile and fish, but very much smaller. In what manner, and even in what part of the system the red particles are formed, we are wholly ignorant. The perfect uniformity of their size and form in the several species of animals, and the undeviating precision with which they assume an elongated figure in oviparous, and a circular figure in viviparous animals, would indicate that the power which forms them, whatever it be, is simple in its nature and very general in its operation. The red particles of the blood are much greater in magnitude than the colourless particles of the fibrin; hence the fibrinous particles readily enter blood-vessels too minute to admit of the red particles. Both sets of particles, diffused through the body of a living animal in a state of extreme subdivision, appear also to be in a state of extreme selfrepulsion. By this self-repulsion the union of the particles is prevented and the blood is maintained in a fluid state. In blood withdrawn from the body of a living animal, the property of self-repulsion, more especially among the fibrinous particles, ceases, and they readily cohere, this cohesion constituting the state of coagulation. The fluid part of the blood called the serum is a transparent fluid, of a light straw-colour tinged with green. The proportion of it to the solid part of the blood, or clot, differs exceedingly in different species of animals and in the same animal at different times, according to different states of the system. There is a strict relation between its relative proportion and the strength and ferocity, or weakness and gentleness of the animal. It is small in proportion to the power and fierceness of the animal, and large in proportion to its weakness and timidity: thus it is smel. in the carnivorous animals, and large in the hare, sheep, and so on. Its quantity is often very much increased in many diseases, and more especially in fever of the typhoid type, in which malady the solid part of the blood is sometimes so much diminished, that coagulation is incapable of taking place, and the entire mass, instead of separating into a transparent fluid and a firm solid, remains a fluid gore. Serum has an adhesive consistence and a saline taste. Its characteristic property is that of coagulating by heat and by the application of certain chemical agents. At the temperature of 160° it is converted into a white, opaque, solid substance, exactly resembling the white of egg when hardened by boiling, being in fact perfectly pure albumen. Serum contains a quantity of uncombined alkali, for it converts the vegetable colours to green., and it holds in solution various earthy and neutral salts. According to M. Le Canu, who has made the most recent chemical analysis of serum, 1000 parts contain, of Crystallizable fatty matter Oily matter Hydrochlorate of soda and potash 6.00 Subcarbonate and phosphate of soda and sul phate of potash Phosphate of lime, magnesia, and iron, with subcarbonate of lime and magnesia Loss 1.20 1.00 2.10 ⚫91 1.00 1000.00 If a mass of coagulated serum be cut into small pieces and placed in the mouth of a funnel, a thin fluid drains from it, which is called serosity, and which constitutes the gravy of meat dressed for the table. From this account of the constitution of the blood, it is manifest that its chief constituents are of an albuminous nature, that is, it contains albumen in three states of modification, viz., albumen, properly so called, fibrin, and red particles; to these are superadded some oily matters, various minute portions of other animal substances, together with saline particles, all dissolved or rather suspended in a large quantity of water. According to M. Le Canu the relative proportions of the constituents of human blood to each other, as they exist in most individuals, is as follows, this table being the mean of .wo analyses: One thousand parts of human blood contain, Of Water Fibrin Albumen Colouring matters Fatty matters in various states Various undefined animal matters and salts 783:37 2.83 67.25 126.31 5.16 15.08 1000.00 It is established on indubitable evidence, that the blood which maintains the life of all the other parts of the body is itself alive. The phenomena which prove this are highly interesting. 1. It is one of the distinctive properties of living bodies that they are capable of resisting, within a certain range, the ordinary influence of physical agents on inanimate matter. Air, heat, moisture, and other physical agents have not the power of decomposing the organized and living body as they have inert matter. There is a principle in the living body which resists the ordinary physical and chemical changes produced by such agents. An egg, for example, as long as it is fresh is alive, and as long as it remains alive it is capable of self-preservation under circumstances which rapidly decompose it when its vitality is extinguished. During the period of incubation the egg is kept at the heat of 103° for the space of several weeks in succession, without undergoing the slightest degree of putrefaction; if its vitality be destroyed, which may be done instantaneously by passing the electric fluid through it, it becomes putrid at that temperature in a few hours. The egg has the like power of resisting cold, which was proved in a beautiful manner by some experiments of John Hunter, so managed as to show at the same time both the power of the vital principle in resisting the physical agent, and the influence of the physical agent in diminishing the energy of the vital principle. He exposed a living egg to the temperature of 17° and 15° of Fahrenheit; it took half an hour to freeze it. When thawed and again exposed to a temperature as high as 25, it was frozen in a quarter of an hour. A living egg, together with one that had been already once frozen and again thawed, were put into a freezing mixture at 15°; the dead egg was frozen twenty-five minutes sooner than the fresh. In the one case the undiminished vitality of the fresh egg ́enabled it to resist the low temperature for a long time; in the other case, in consequence of the diminished or destroyed vitality of the frozen egg, it yielded speedily to the influence of the physical agent. Now precisely analogous results were obtained in similar experiments made on the blood. On ascertaining the degree of cold and the from the blood-vessel, it was found that, as in the egg, a length of time necessary to freeze blood immediately taken much shorter time and a much less degree of cold were required to freeze blood that had previously been frozen and again thawed, than blood recently taken from a living vessel, and for precisely the same reason. cently drawn from the blood-vessel, its vitality being comparatively undiminished, it is able to resist cold longer than The proportion of albumen contained in 1000 parts of blood the vital energy of which is already partly exhausted blood is capable of varying from 78:270, the maximum, to by exposure to the influence of the physical agent. 57.890, the minimum. The quantity of fibrin varies from served in the coagulation of the blood, dependent on the same This result is analogous to a phenomenon recently ob1:360 to 7.236, the medium of twenty-two experiments being 4-298. It appeared to be the greatest in the young or middle blood letting in diminishing the vital energy of the blood. principle, and placing in a striking light the influence of aged of the sanguineous temperament, and in the inflammatory state; and least in the lymphatic constitution, the aged, being the mode in which the blood dies. Accordingly it is It has been stated that coagulation is a process of death, and those suffering under congestion and hæmorrhage. The proportion of the red particles varies more remark- found that coagulation is slow, that is, that the blood is ably than that of any other constituent of the blood. In longer in dying according to the vital energy of the system. sound health the maximum was found to be in 1000 parts with great debility, as in the typhoid types of fever, it of blood 148:450, and the minimum 68-349; the medium 108-399. In the male, the medium quantity is 132 150; in coagulates with extreme rapidity, or is even incapable of the female, 99-169. It varies considerably with the tem-coagulating at all; when, on the contrary, it is taken in perament. In the lymphatic temperament, the medium diseases attended with an exaltation of the vital energy, quantity was found to be in the male, 117 667, in the as in intense inflammation, it is not coagulated in triple or female. 116-300; in the sanguineous temperament in quadruple that space of time. The reason is obvious. But the male, 136-497, in the female, 126-174. According to it is remarkable that even during one and the same operathis statement there are contained in 1000 parts of blood, in tion of blood-letting there is a manifest difference in the a sanguineous temperament, 19'830 more red particles than time in which the blood taken at the beginning, in the in the lymphatic temperament. Both spontaneous hæmor- middle, and at the end of the operation coagulates. Blood rhage and the artificial abstraction of blood from the body was received from a horse at four times, about a minute diminish the relative proportion of the red particles far and a half intervening between the filling of each cup. beyond that of any of the other constituents of the blood. Min. See. This is found on examination of the blood in the female after an excessive loss of blood by the catamenial discharge; and on examining portions of blood taken from the same body after certain intervals, it was found that a first bleeding furnished in 1000 parts of blood, 792-897 of water; 70-210 of albumen; 9163 soluble salts and extraneous matter, and 12773 of red particles; but a third bleeding a few days afterwards in the same patient, a female, gave 834'053 of water, 71-111 of albumen, 7:329 of soluble salts and extraneous matter, and 87:510 of red particles. The relative proportion of the different constituents of the blood is constantly varying. Thus the quantity of water, according to M. Le Canu, is capable of varying in 1000 parts from 853 135, the maximum, to 778-625, the minimum. In the male, the medium quantity is 791-944, in the female 821-764: the watery proportion also varies with the temperament. In the lymphatic temperament, in the male, it is 830-566; in the female, 803.716; while in the sanguineous it is, in the male, 786 584, and in the female it The same result was obtained in blood taken from a human subject. A pound and a half of blood was removed from the arm of a woman labouring under fever, a portion of which received into a teacup on the first effusion remained fluid for the space of seven minutes; a similar quantity taken immediately before tying up the arm was coagulated in three minutes, thirty seconds. These experiments demonstrate that coagulation is rapid or slow as the vital energy of the blood is exhausted or unexhausted, or that in proportion to the degree of life possessed by the blood is the space of time it takes in dying. vital energy of the system is great, the red particles abound; when it is depressed they are deficient. In the former state they are of a bright red colour; in the latter dusky purple or even black. have an intimate connexion with a diminution of the saline constituents. Out of the body, as has been shown, the red particles change their figure instantaneously, and are rapidly dissolved when in contact with pure water; while they undergo little change of form, if the water hold saline matter in solution. It would seem that one use of the saline constituents of the blood is to preserve entire the figure and constitution of the red particles. It is certain that any change in the proportion of the saline constituents produces a most powerful effect on the condition of the red particles. It is no less certain that changes do take place in the proportion of the saline constituents. In the state of health the taste of the blood is distinctly salt, depending chiefly on the quantity of muriate of soda contained in it. In certain violent and malignant diseases, such, for example, as the malignant forms of fever, and more especially that form of it termed pestilential cholera, this salt taste is scarcely, if at all, perceptible; and it is ascertained that, in such cases, the proportion of saline matter is sensibly diminished. "When the depression of the vital energy is extreme, the power of mutual repulsion exerted by the particles would seem to be so far destroyed, as to admit of their adhering to each other partially in certain organs; while in other cases they seem to be actually disorganized, and to have their structures so broken up, that they escape from the current of the circulation as if dissolved in the serum, through the 2. In the second place the vitality of the blood is demon-minute vessels intended only for the exhalation of the wastrated by another class of phenomena. If a living egg betery part of the blood. This fearful change is conceived to exposed to a degree of heat equal to the temperature at which the egg is maintained during incubation, certain motions or actions are observed spontaneously to arise in it which terminate in the development of the chick. An analogous process takes place in the blood. If blood be effused from its vessels in the living body, either upon the surfaces of organs or into cavities, it solidifies without losing its vitality. This is not the same process as the coagulation of the blood out of the body; it is a vital process, indispensable to the action, and completely under the control of the vital principle. If blood thus solidified within the body be examined some time after it has changed from the fluid to the solid state, the solid is found to abound with bloodvessels. Some of these vessels can be distinctly traced passing from the surrounding living parts into the mass of solidified blood; with others of these vessels no communication whatever can be traced. Now those vessels, the origin of which cannot be traced external to the solid mass, were supposed by Mr. Hunter to be formed within it. Were this really the case, it is obvious that such a solid would commence an action terminating in its organization; an action perfectly analogous to that by which the incubated egg commences a series of movements which terminate in the development of the chick; an action never observed to take place in any body not endowed with life. This argument however is not really affected by the question as to the extrinsic or intrinsic origin of the blood-vessels. What is certain is, that a clot of blood surrounded by living parts becomes organized; what is certain is, that no dead substance thus surrounded by living parts does become organized the inference is, that the blood itself is alive. While flowing in its living vessel the blood is always maintained in a state of fluidity, in consequence of the state of repulsion both of its red and of its fibrinous particles: and the maintenance of this fluidity is indispensable to life, for the blood could not circulate, and could not divide so as to permeate through the constantly diminishing tubes of the arteries and the capillary branches of the veins, if it approached the solid state. Of the changes which the blood undergoes in health and disease (the changes of the blood in the latter case constituting its PATHOLOGY) a brief view is exhibited in the following extract from the Philosophy of Health: Health and life depend on the quantity, quality, and distribution of the blood. The chief source from which the blood itself is derived is the chyle: hence too much or too little food, or too great or too little activity of the organs that digest it, may render the quantity of blood preternaturally abundant or deficient; or, though there be neither excess nor deficiency in the quantity of nourishment formed, parts of the blood which ought to be removed may be retained, or parts which ought to be retained may be removed, and hence the actual quantity in the system may be superabundant or insufficient. The quality of the blood may be also essentially changed by the disturbance of the balance of certain organic functions; digestion, absorption, circulation, respiration, are indispensable to the formation of the blood, and to the nourishment of the tissues. Absorption, nutrition, secretion, circulation, render the blood impure, either by directly com municating to it hurtful ingredients, or by allowing noxious matters to accumulate in it, or by destroying the relative proportion of its constituents. Organs are specially provided, the main function of which is to separate and remove from the blood these injurious substances. Organs of this class are called depurating, and the process they carry on is denominated that of depuration. The lungs, the liver, the kidneys, are depurating organs, and one result at least of the functions they perform is the purification or depuration of the blood. If the lung fail to eliminate carbon, the liver bile, the kidney urine, carbon, bile, urine, or at least the constituents of which these substances are composed, must accumulate in the blood, contaminate it, and render it ineapable of duly nourishing and stimulating the organs. 'But though the blood be good in quality and just in quantity, health and life must still depend upon its proper distribution. It may be sent out to the system too rapidly or too slowly. It may be distributed to different portions of the system unequally; too much may be sent to one organ, and too little to another; consequently, while the latter languishes, the former may be oppressed, overwhelmed, or stimulated to violent and destructive action. In either case health is disturbed and life endangered.' (See Hunter on the Blood; Prout, Inquiry into the Origin and Properties of the Blood, in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery, vol. i. pp. 10. 133, &c.; Prevost and Dumas, Mémoire de la Soc. de Physique, &c., t. 1.; Bostock's Elements of Physiology, vol. i.; Le Canu, Nouvelles Re cherches sur le Sang, in Jour. de Pharmacie, Sept. and Oct., 1833; Dr. Southwood Smith's Philosophy of Health, vol. i. chap. 6.) The relative proportion of every constituent of the blood is capable of varying; and of course in the degree in which the healthy proportion is deranged, the quality of the BLOOD, THOMAS, generally called Colonel Blood, mass must undergo a corresponding deterioration. The was a native of Ireland, and an adventurer of no ordinary watery portion is sometimes so deficient, that the mass is character. Whether he was the son of a blacksmith, or of obviously thickened; while at other times the fluid prepon- a person in better condition who had property in iron-works, derates so much over the solid constituents, that the blood is uncertain; but he is believed to have been born about is thin and watery. The albumen, the quantity of which 1628. He came over to England and married the daughter varies considerably even in health, in disease is sometimes of Mr. Holcraft, a Lancashire gentleman, as is supposed, twice as great, and at other times is less than half its na-in 1648. He returned afterwards to Ireland, served as a tural proportion. In some cases the fibrin preponderates so lieutenant in the parliament forces, and had a certain much, that the coagulum formed by the blood is exceed- quantity of land assigned to him for his pay. Henry Cromingly coherent, firm, and dense; in other cases the quantity well put him into the commission for the peace. After the of fibrin is so small, that the coagulation is imperfect, form- king's restoration, the Act of Settlement in Ireland, by at: ing only a soft, loose, and tender coagulum, and in ex- fecting Blood's fortune, made him discontented beyond the treme cases the blood remains wholly fluid. When the common feeling of the republican party, and finding a de BLG sign on foot for a general insurrection, which was to be begun by surprising the Castle of Dublin, and seizing the person of the Duke of Ormond, the then lord-lieutenant, he joined it, and ultimately became its leader. The conspiracy, however, which had been long suspected, was discovered Colonel Blood fled, but one upon the eve of its execution. Lackie a minister (his brother-in-law), with various others, were apprehended, convicted, and executed. Blood remained for a while in Ireland, sometimes harboured by the Oliverians, and sometimes by the native Irish in the mountains; but he at last secured his retreat to Holland, where he is stated to have been received into intimacy by some of the most considerable persons in the republic, and particularly | by Admiral de Ruyter. From Holland he came to England, and joined the Fifth Monarchy men, whose plans giving no promise of success he withdrew to Scotland, where he again joined rebellion, and was present in the action of Pentland After that defeat he fled back to Hills, Nov. 27th, 1666. England, thence to Ireland, and thence to England again, where he lived for a time in disguise, meditating revenge against the Duke of Ormond; whom he actually seized on the night of December 6th, 1670, in his coach in St. James's Street, with the intent, as was believed, of carrying him to Tyburn to hang him. When the party had got into the fields, the duke, who was tied on horseback to one of Blood's associates, by a violent effort flung himself and the assassin to the ground, and while they were struggling in the dirt, the duke's servants rescued their master. Blood had so contrived this enterprize, that, though the names of some of his companions were known, he himself was not suspected to be concerned in it; nor, though a reward of 1000l. was offered by proclamation to discover the perpetrators of the crime, could any of the gang be apprehended. The miscarriage of this design put him upon one still more strange and hazardous to repair his broken fortunes. He proposed to the same desperate persons who had assisted him in the former attempt, to join him in seizing the regalia of England he was to contrive the means, and they were to devote themselves to the service. His scheme was so well laid, and executed with so bold a spirit, that on the 9th of May, 1671, he so far carried his point as to get a part of the regalia (the crown and orb) into his possession. Blood, who had assumed the disguise of a clergyman, concealed the crown beneath his cloak, but was pursued and taken. One of his companions, Parret, had the orb. An authentic narrative of this affair, drawn up by Sir Gilbert Talbot, then master of the jewel-house, from the depositions of Edwards, who was the immediate keeper of the jewels, and who was all but murdered on the occasion, has furnished our historians with the particulars of this transaction. Blood and his companion Parret, with another of the party of the name of Hunt, who was known to have been concerned in the attack upon the Duke of Ormond, were now committed to the Tower-gaol, where, strange to say, at the instigation of the Duke of Buckingham, then the fa vourite and first minister, the king himself visited him; finally pardoned him, took him into favour at court, and gave him a pension. For several years applications were constantly made to the throne through the mediation of Colonel Blood; and the indulgence shown to him became a public scandal. Rochester has the following lines in his History of Insipids : Blood, that wears treason in his face, How much he is at court in grace, Let's steal the king and out-do Blood.' When the ministry styled the 'Cabal' fell to pieces, Colonel Blood's consequence at court declined. He then became an enemy to his former patron, the Duke of Buckingham, for a conspiracy to fix a scandalous imputation upon whom he was convicted in the court of King's Bench, and committed to prison; but finding bail, was allowed to retire to his house in the Bowling Alley in Westminster, where, from disease heightened by disappointed feelings, he died Angust 24th, 1680. BLO The Society of the Literary Fund are in possession of two daggers: the one used by Colonel Blood in his attack upon Edwards, the other by an accomplice. The inscriptions on the sheaths of each record the facts. They came to the society, with other residuary property, by the bequest of Mr. Thomas Newton. (See Remarks on Some Eminent Passages in the Life of the Fam'd Mr. Blood, fol. Lond. 1680: Sir Gilbert Talbot's Narrative of Blud's Attempt on the Crown in the Tower. M.S. Harl. No. 6859; Biogr. Britann., Kippis's edit. vol. ii. p. 361; and The Narrative of Colonel Thomas Blood, Concerning the Design Reported to be laid Against the Life and Honour of George, Duke of Buckingham, folio, BLOOD-HOUND, the name of a hound, celebrated London, 1680.) for its exquisite scent and unwearied perseverance, qualities which were taken advantage of, by training it not only to the pursuit of game, but to the chase of man. blood-hound (and the pure blood is rare) stands about eight and twenty inches in height, muscular, compact, and strong; the forehead is broad, and the face narrow towards the are large, pendulous, and broad at the base; the aspect is muzzle; the nostrils are wide and well developed; the ears serene and sagacious; the tail is long, with an upward curve when in pursuit, at which time the hound opens with a voice deep and sonorous, that may be heard down the wind for a very long distance. A true The colour of the true breed is stated to be almost invariably a reddish tan, darkening gradually towards the upper parts till it becomes mixed with black on the back; the lower parts, limbs, and tail being of a lighter shade, and the but the blood-hounds in the possession of Thomas Astle, muzzle tawny. Pennant adds, a black spot over each eye,' Esq. (and they were said to have been of the original were not common, had a little white about them, such as a blood) had not these marks. Some, but such instances star in the face, &c. The better opinion is, that the original stock was a mixture of the deep-mouthed southern Gervase Markham, in his 'Maison Rustique,' speaking of hound, and the powerful old English stag-hound. hounds, says, 'The baie-coloured ones have the second place for goodnesse, and are of great courage, ventring far, and they runne surely, and with great boldnesse, of a quicke scent, finding out very well the turnes and windings. commonly loving the stagge more than any other beast, but more head-strong and harde to reclaime than the white, and they make no account of hares. It is true, that they be best of the fallow sort of dogges, are those which are of a put men to more paine and travaill about the same. The having therewithall a white spot in the forehead, or in the brighter haire, drawing more unto the colour of red, and as incline to a light yellow colour, being graie or blacke necke, in like manner those which are all fallow: but such spotted, are nothing worth: such as are trussed up and have dewclawes, are good to make bloudhounds.' Our ancestors soon discovered the infallibility of the bloodhound in tracing any animal, living or dead, to its a staunch old hound was led to the spot whence a deer resting place. To train it, the young dog accompanied by or other animal had been taken on for a mile or two the hounds were then laid on and encouraged, and after huntof the venison which composed it. The next step was to ing this 'drag' successfully, were rewarded with a portion take the young dog with his seasoned tutor, to a spot whence a man whose shoes had been rubbed with the blood of a deer had started on a circuit of two or three miles during his progress the man was instructed to renew the blood from time to time, to keep the scent well alive. His circuit was gradually enlarged at each succeeding lesson, and the young hound, thus entered and trained, became, at last, fully war, or following gear,' as the pursuit after the property plunequal to hunt by itself, either for the purposes of woodcraft, this variety of canis domesticus, to which Linnæus applied dered in a border foray was termed. Indeed, the name of the name of Sagar, cannot be mentioned without calling up visions of feudal castles with their train of knights and warders, and all the stirring events of those old times Sir Walter Scott gives a striking reality to the scene, when when the best tenure was that of the strong hand. he makes the stark moss-trooper, William of Deloraine, who had baffled Percy's best blood-hounds, allude to the pursuit, in pronouncing his eulogy over Richard Musgrave pleasure of the chace, though he himself was the object of . with the sorrow of a warrior who had lost the stern joy afforded by a hero worthy of his steel 'Yet rest thee God! for well I know I ne'er shall find a nobler foe. In all the northern countries here, Ir the same Lay' there is one of the best poetical descriptions of the blood-hound in action, if not the best; for though Somerville's lines may enter more into detail, they want the vivid animation of the images brought absolutely under the eye by the power of Scott, where the 'noble child, the heir of Branksome, is left alone in his terror. Starting oft, he journeyed on, And hark! and hark! the deep-mouthed Ink Bursts on the path a dark blood-hound, And his red eye shot fire. Soon as the wildered child saw he, I ween you would have seen with joy The bearing of the gallant boy, His wet cheek glowed 'twixt fear and ire! And held his little bat on high; So fierce he struck, the dog, afraid, But still in act to spring; When dashed au archer through the glade, Indeed, this feudal dog is frequently introduced by our poet, from his ballads, where Smaylho'me's Lady gay, wooing the Phantom Knight to come to her bower, in the 'Eve of St. John,' tells the spectre that she will chain the blood-hound, down to that grand moonlight scene in the Legend of Montrose, where Dalgetty and Ranald of the Mist are traced to their wood-girt aëry after their escape from Argyle's dungeons. The pursuit of border forayers was called the hot-trod. Theharried party and his friends followed the marauders with blood-hound and bugle-horn, and if his dog could trace the scent into the opposite kingdom he was entitled to pursue them thither. We have only to look into history, and we shall find that moss-troopers, children of the mist, and adventurers, were not the only persons who were put to their shifts to evade the diligence of the sleuth-bratch, or blood-hound. Barbour and Henry the Minstrel relate events where personages no less than the Bruce and Wallace were the principal actors. The former gives accounts of the king's repeated escapes from such pursuits, and the 'wily turns' whereby he threw the hound off the scent. On one occasion he waded a bow-shot down a brook, and climbed a tree which overhung the water. Barbour well describes the wavering' of the sleuth-hund' 'ta and fra,' when it was thrown out by the king's stratagem, and the consequent disappointment of Jhon of Lorn. Henry the Minstrel, in a romantically wild story, relates how, after a short skirmish at Black-Erne side in which Wallace was worsted, the English followed up the retreat which he was forced to make, attended by only sixteen men, with a border blood-hound. 'In Gelderland there was that bratchet bred To spill blood was accordingly the sure way to stop the hound in its career; and Henry states that, upon this occasion, Wallace had been joined by Fawdon or Fadzean, an Irishman of a dark and suspicious character. During the retreat, this man refused to proceed on account of fatigue, either real or fictitious. Wallace argued with him in vain, and irritated by the delay of the retreat and the approach of he enemy, struck off his head :-when the English came up they found their hound by the dead body. The sleuth stopped at Fawdon, till she stood, 'The Minstrel' concludes his story with the following ca tastrophe. The lonely tower of Gask was Wallace's place of refuge. A blast of a horn roused him at midnight. He sent out his men by two and two, but none came back. At last he was alone-and the blast became louder. Down went the hero sword in hand, and, at the gate of the tower, came full upon the headless figure of Fawdon. He fled back into the tower, tore open the boards of a window, leaped down a height of fifteen feet in his terror, and rushed up the river. At length, on looking back, he beheld the tower wrapped in flame, and the dilated form of Fawdon upon the turret holding in its gigantic hand a blazing beam.* But the knights are dust, and it is necessary to bring down the history of the bloodhound to our own unromantic times. Sir Walter Scott states that the breed was kept up by the Buccleuch family on their border estates till within the eighteenth century, and records the following narrative :'A person was alive in the memory of man who remembered a blood-hound being kept at Eldinhope, in Ettricke Forest, for whose maintenance the tenant had an allowance of meal. At that time the sheep were always watched at night. Upon one occasion, when the duty had fallen upon the narrator, then a lad, he became exhausted with fatigue, and fell asleep upon a bank, near sun-rising. Suddenly he was awakened by the tread of horses, and saw five men well mounted and armed ride briskly over the edge of the hill. They stopped and looked at the flock; but the day was too far broken to admit the chance of their carrying any of them off. One of them, in spite, leaped from his horse, and coming to the shepherd seized him by the belt he wore round his waist; and setting his foot upon his body pulled it till it broke, and carried it away with him. They rode off at the gallop: and the shepherd giving the alarm, the blood-hound was turned loose, and the people in the neighbourhood alarmned. The marauders, however, escaped, notwithstanding a sharp pursuit. This circumstance serves to show how very long the license of the Borderers continued in some degree to manifest itself.' This, perhaps, is the last instance of an attempted 'Bor der foray' on record. The times were changed. The nobles had ceased to pride themselves on their ignorance of all the arts save the art of war, and to make it matter of thanks giving that they knew not how to use the pen.+ Civilization advanced as learning was diffused, till the law of the strongest no longer prevailed against the law of the land. The blood-hound, from the nobler pursuit of heroes and knights, 'minions of the moon,' who swept away the cattle and goods of whole districts, marking the extent of their raid by all the horrors of fire and sword, sank to the tracker of the deer-stealer and petty felon. About a century and a quarter ago, when deer-stealing was a common crime, the park-keepers relied upon their blood-hounds principally for detecting the thief; and so adroit were these dogs, that when one of them was fairly laid on, the escape of the criminal was with good reason considered to be all but impossible. Even now the breed still lingers about some of the great deer-parks; and many of our readers will remember the noble specimen at Richmond Park, bearing the name of Procter, and the admirable study of his head engraved by T. Landseer from a painting by his brother Edwin, published in the Sporting Magazine. In the spring of this year (1835), there was a grand picture of one of these dogs in a sleeping attitude by Edwin Landseer, exhibited in the British Gallery, Pall Mall. It is said that the original unfortunately broke its neck in leaping out of a window in London, and application was immediately made to the painter to perpetuate the memory of so fine a hound. This noble variety is now only kept as an object of curiosity and ornament; for its services have long since been superseded by the justice's warrant and the police-officer. We find it, indeed, recorded about thirty years ago, that the Thrapston association for the prevention of felons in Northamptonshire have provided and trained a blood-hound • See Sir Walter Scott's notes to his Lay of the Last Minstrel.' exclaims the Douglas' in Marmion. |