Waterbury Democrat., 1901-01-21
NATURE Or BLOODHOUNDS.

'It is peculiar fact" said Detective Frank D. Mitchell the other day, re- lates the Omaha Bee, that the gen eral public has an entirely erroneous idea as to the nature and character istics of the bloodhound. The popular opinion is that he is a beast of giant frame and unusually ferocious, with q penchant for eating the criminal whom he has brought to bay. An other common error is that he can follow a scent indefinitely, through Q thousand sinuosities, though it may be intersected by any number of other trails.
 ''The average bloodhound is no more to be dreaded so far as his fierceness is concerned than a pug. He is a gaunt, rawboned creature, with a head running to 8 peak; sleepy eyes and long, pendulous ears. As to dis position, he is lazy. His usefulness lies chiefly in the keenness of his ol- factory nerves, enabling him to fol- low a fresh scent many miles. He seldom touches his quarry when run to earth, however, and never does un- less starved to it. The bloodhound differs from the English foxhound, in that he never gives tongue or bays while following, a scent.
 "Bloodhounds are not of much use in tracking criminals in city, or where there is comparatively dense population, as the numerous cross trails confuse them. This was dem onstrated last winter when we were hunting two negroes named Will Tony and Sam Barnette. The peo- pie of Benson had been complaining of chicken thieves. Almost every night some hen coop in that suburb of Omaha would be footed and finally Detective Drummy and I were de- tailed to work up the case. We put in several days on it without landing our man, and the aggravating part of it was that the thefts were going right on, even while we were hunt ing for the criminals. We'll, eventual ly we decided to adopt heroic meas ures. We had a consultation with several prominent citizens of Benson, and the result was we sent to Beatrice for pack of bloodhounds.
 "We kept the dogs in hiding until there was another foray on a hen coop, and then, bright and early one morning, the hounds were put on fresh trail. They followed it about a quarter of a mile and finally came to standstill on the front porch of house in the outskirts of the village.
 ''The family that lived in this house bore a good reputation, but we de- cided to go in anyhow and make an investigation. We searched every where, from cellar to garret, but there was no sign of a stolen chicken. Not even feather could be found on the premises. Then we took the dogs back 10 the starting point and had them go over the trail again, and again they wound up on the front porch of the same house. Try as we would we couldn't get the beasts to leave that place. The trail seemed to end there. If the thieves had gone up in a balloon at that point they couldn't have obliterated their tracks more effectually. So the dogs were declared a failure and were sent back to Beatrice.
 "Later we succeeded in catching Tony and Barnette red-handed, with the evidence of their guilt upon them, and they confessed. I have never been able to explain to my own satisfac- tion why the trail left off so abrupt ly on the porch of that particular house. There is tradition comes up from the south, a survivor of the ante bellum days, that if a fleeing slave .ied sliced onions upon the soles of his feet the hounds could not track him. Perhaps that is what Barnette and Tony did on the piazza of that house II don't know"