FLEET FOOTED DOGS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 694, 25 June 1903, Page 9

FLEET FOOTED DOGS.

The estimates made regarding the speed of various breeds of dogs are in most instances unauthenticated, and too often, bear evidence of exaggeration, but statements from practical, reliable observers are always acceptable. Marvelous endurance is shown by little fox terriers, who follow their masters patiently for hours while the latter are raiding on bicycles or in carriages, say* Monsieur Rusolier, a French scientist, and even greater endurance is shown by cer-

tain wild animals that are akin to dogs. Thus the wolf can run between fifty and sixty miles in 0119 bight, and an Arctic fox can do quite as well, if not better. Nansen met one of-these foxes on the ice at a point more than seventy miles northwest of the Sanikow territory, which ifl 480 miles from tlhe Asiatic coast. Eskimo and Siberian dogs can travel forty-five: miles on the ice in five hours, and there i* , one case on record in which a team of Es- ' kimo dogs travelled six and a-half miles in 28 minutes.

According to Monsieur Rusolier, the speed of the shepherd dogs and those used in hunting ranges from ten to fifteen yards a second. English setters and pointers hunt at the rate of eighteen to nineteen miles an hour, and they can maintain this speed for at least two hours. Foxhounds are extraordinarily swift, as is proved by the fact that a dog of this breed once beat a thoroughbred horse, covering four miles in six and a half minutes, which was at the. rate of nearly eighteen yards a second. Greyhounds are the swiftest of all four-footed creatures. English greyhounds, which are carefully selected, and which are used for coursing, are able to cover at full gallop a space between eighteen and twenty three yards every second.