Bloodhound

Bloodhound, a variety of Hound (q.v.), remarkable for its exquisite powers of scent, and for the eagerness with which it tracks a bleeding animal; it is able to select a freshly-wounded deer from among a herd, and follow its trail; and from this faculty it derives its name. It was also formerly called, both in England and Scotland, sleut-hound or sleuth-hound, from the Middle-English sleuth, 'a slot or track' (Icel. sloth). The bloodhound was formerly common and much in use in Britain, as well as on the continent of Europe for hunting purposes, being in the possession of most noble families, who vied with one another in the purity and excellence of their different strains, in the pursuit of felons and of fugitive slaves in Cuba and the slave-holding states of the American Union, differs largely from the true bloodhound, and is really the descendant of mastiffs with a bulldog cross, inferior to the real bloodhound in scent and all but ferocity; it is also called the Cuban mastiff. According to Powell (The American Siberia, 1892), foxhounds, specially bred and trained, are used for man-hunting in nearly all the convict-camps of Florida, &c. For the true bloodhound's kin, see TALBOT.