Arrian on Coursing.

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The following version does not aim at pleasing the mere literary man. It was not undertaken with the ambitious expectation of being generally acceptable. It is addressed to the coursing public alone—to the amateurs of the leash; for whom the original was written, seventeen centuries ago, by their representative of old, a courser of Nicomedia in Asia Minor; and for whose amusement and instruction the same now assumes an English garb.

The general reader will find little in it to interest him. He will perhaps consider it altogether unworthy of his notice. The sportsman, fond of

will read it with indifference, as treating of a branch of rural sport, not congenial to his taste; and wonder that an attempt should be made to bring under public notice so ancient a treatise on a subject of such partial interest. But the courser, 2it is humbly conceived, the active patron of the κύνες Κελτικαὶ proud of his greyhounds, that

will peruse it con amore, and find in its pages much that is entertaining and practically useful, and that utility enhanced in the department of annotation.

The literary courser, whose attention it more particularly solicits, will reap the additional benefit of the light which is thrown on Arrian’s text by the ancient authors of Greece and Rome; and be ready to yield to the translator the humble merit of having collected in one point of view the classical elucidations of the Cynegeticus,⁠[1] and the pertinent observations of writers of a later period.

The original manual is conversant with coursing, as practised in the age of Hadrian and the Antonini, at which period the Celtic hound was well known, and highly prized: but the annotations of the translator have a more extensive range, being selected from various Cynegetica in print and manuscript, from the first institution of coursing to the present time.⁠[2]

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The imperfect poem of Gratius, the Faliscian, on hunting, and the often-cited simile of his contemporary Ovid, afford the earliest notice of the canis Gallicus—for he was unknown to ancient Greece.⁠[3] The description of a single-handed course by the poet of the Metamorphoses, as it is the first attempt of the kind by any classic author, so is it unrivalled in the accuracy of its technical phraseology, and the beauty of its poetry. Intermediate in point of time between the vivid Ovidian sketch, and the full and perfect picture of Arrian, are the faint outlines of the epigrammatist Martial:Martial. L. iii. Epig. 47. et L. xiv. Epig. 200. and subsequent to the Bithynian’s, the somewhat doubtful portrait of the philologist Julius Pollux,Polluc. Onomast. L. v. Præf. presented to the Emperor Commodus; and yet later, that of Oppian,Oppian. Cyneg. L. i. vs. 401. the Greek poet of Anazarbus, of the reigns of Severus and Caracalla.—In4 these authors alone do we find any allusion to the courser’s hound, till towards the close of the third century, when he again appears in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian;Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 106. who has cleverly struck out in a few lines the elegant symmetry of his shape, and added thereto some peculiar remarks on the selection, feeding, and entrance of puppies. With the scanty portraiture of the Carthaginian poet we are brought down to the reigns of Carus,Ejusd. vs. 64. his sons, “Divi fortissima pignora Cari,” and Diocletian: at which epoch, memorable alike in the annals of the world and its literature, the classical history of the leash may be said to terminate, and therewith all notice of the Celtic hound.⁠[4]

We have no ancient records of the chase⁠[5] to succeed the Greek and Latin Cynegetica; for though it be true that the barbarian codes of law, the Spelman. Gloss. pp. 113. et 551. Du Cange Gloss. in voce.Salic, Burgundian, and German, extended their protection to our variety of Canis Venaticus, about the year 500, under the title of Veltris and its synonyms; and some of the Cynegetical writers appear to have been well known in the dark ages, and so highly valued in the eighth century, as to be read among the higher Greek and Roman classics, in the time of Charlemagne; and we believe coursing and other sports were as attractive in the field, as the writers upon such subjects were in the schools, (for the court of this prince had its Veltrarii,Spelman. in voce. officers of the greyhound-kennel, “qui veltres custodiebant,”) still, instead of any formal treatise of this date upon the pastime of the leash, we find for several centuries, only incidental allusions to the greyhound, and his high repute, principally as distinctive of the gentility of his possessor, until the publication of “The Booke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, &c.” by Dame Juliana Berners, in the fifteenth century.

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The didactic discourse of hunting, contained in this volume, commonly known by its territorialHaslewood’s Prolegomena to Book of St. Albans. appellation of “The Book of St. Albans,” may be an amplified versification of the prosaic “Venery of Mayster John Gyfford and Will^m Twety, that were with Kyng Edward the Secunde;” or possibly a compilation and translation by the sister of Lord Berners, or the “one sumtyme schole mayster of Warton’s Hist. of Engl. Poetry, Vol. ii. p. 172.Seynt Albons” from earlier Latin and French writers: but such authorities are as yet, I believe, unknown to Antiquaries. Excepting, therefore, the few lines, before alluded to, in the latest of the Latin Cynegetica, and the earlier portrait of Oppian, which I consider referable to the 6hound in question, it may be said that we do not possess in print any full description of “the propriteeBook of St. Albans.s of a good Grehounde” ἐκ τῶν ποδῶν ἐς τὴν κεφαλὴν, from the time of the learned Courser of Nicomedia, till that of the sporting prioress of Sopewell.

Not that I am ignorant of the curious early treatise of Gaston Phœbus, the celebrated Comte de Foix, written in the middle of the fourteenth century, entitled “Des Deduitz de la Chasse de Bestes Sauvaiges et des Oyseaux de Proye;”Ms. Cotton. Vesp. B. xii. Brit. Mus. nor of a more rare work in manuscript, The Mayster of Game, composed by Edmund Duke of York,Henry VI. pt. ii. act ii. “Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son,” in the latter part of the fourteenth century; and therefore, in point of date, claiming a priority to the book of St. Albans, as do, of course, the lucubrations of the Second Edward’s attendants before mentioned. But these enchiridia of field sports preceded the Sopewell collection only a few years; and in the Count de Foix’s manual, as given by Fouilloux under the title of “La Chasse du Roy Phebus,” there is nothing on our subject worth noticing.

In The Crafte of Hontyng⁠[6] by Gyfford and Twety, the greyhound is mentioned only once; and hare-coursing is not recorded at all.

The unpublished labours of the Duke of York,⁠[7] “Edmonde, hyght of Langley,” contain much original and valuable information: and it is to be regretted that it is not rendered more available to coursers by being committed to the press. With copious general descriptions of our ancient field-sports, and animals obnoxious to the chase, The Mayster of Game unites specific delineations of the shape of each variety of canis venaticus, employed by British sportsmen of past days, with occasional references to the chace practices of foreign countries “by yonde the see.” The chapter of greyhoundes and of here nature, as cited hereafter in illustration of Arrian, will be read with pleasure. Indeed the Duke’s portrait of the Celtic hound is even more minutely accurate and precise than its Grecian prototype, and her manners as they are quaintly termed, and briefly sketched in the royal Cynegeticus, establish many of the remarks of the younger Xenophon περὶ τῆς γνώμης τῶν κυνῶν.

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Still Dame Julyan’s compilation being, at least, the first of the kind that issued from the English press, and the type of our modern works of Venery, may be viewed as the earliest attempt, since the revival of letters, to certify by intelligible canons, the corporeal characteristics of a good greyhound. With the traditionary dogmata of Sir Tristrem de Liones,⁠[8] who was the reputed “begynner of all the termes of huntynge and hawkynge,” it incorporates the accumulated knowledge of many centuries. Script. illust. M. B. auct. I. Baleo Cent. 8. 611.And the Dame⁠[9] being no ordinary personage—“Illustris fœmina, corporis et animi dotibus abundans,Oldys in Biograph. Britannica, in voce Caxton, note. ac formæ elegantiâ spectabilis—heroica mulier, ingeniosa virago”—“a second Minerva in her studies, and another Diana in her diversions”—her contemporaries would doubtless receive a cynegetical treatise from her cloister at Sopewell, with gratitude and admiration.

After the publication of the book of St. Albans, other cynegetica poetical and prosaic, in various languages, followed in rapid succession; of which the earliest in my possession are from the presses of Aldus and Feyerabendi; but collectively they afford very scanty instruction on the history and practice of the leash.

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The Epicedium of the Florentine poet, Hercules Stroza, addressed to the Duchess of Ferrara; the hendecasyllables of Adrian Castellesi, and the quatrains of John Adam Lonicer, with their accompanying “icones artificiosissimæ ad vivum expressæ,” add nothing to our stock of information. And the same may be said of the chaste cynegetical eclogues, “Sarnis et Viburnus,” of Petrus Lotichius Secundus,

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I have in vain examined the four books of “Natalis Comes de Venatione” for more than the name of the canis Celticus—probably to be interpreted of the war-dog of Gaul, rather than the Vertragus.

The Cynegeticon of Peter Angelio, commonly called, from his Tuscan birth-place, Bargæus, is said to have been the labour of twenty years. It is a splendid specimen of modern Latinity, in beautiful Virgilian hexameters, to which the literary courser will award their merited meed of praise. The most approved shape of the “canis cursor” is correctly portrayed, with a reference to the fabulous tale of the Ovidian Lælaps. Nor has the poet disdained to enter on the minute and necessary details of breeding, and kenneling the pack. Indeed the whole of his fifth book is devoted to the “blanda canum soboles;” and the reader will find incorporated in the instructions therein given, nearly all the arcana of the Greek and Latin Cynegetica, excepting these of Arrian’s Manual, which do not appear to have been known to the poet of Barga. He employs the greyhound in coursing the fox, wolf, deer, and goat, but gives no description of hare-coursing in any of the six books of his Cynegeticon; nor in the eclogues entitled “Venatoria,” forming part of the fifth book of his “Carmina.” Had the manuscript of Arrian’s Cynegeticus been known to him, he would, doubtless, have entered as fully into hare-coursing, as he has into every other variety of chase.

Of Conrad Heresbach’s compendium of fishing, fowling, and hunting,⁠[10] attached to his larger work “de Re Rusticâ,” I 10have in vain endeavoured to procure a copy. It is a prosaic work, treating more of animal history, as I am informed, than of venation: still as this abbreviator of the labours of his predecessors was a man of various acquirements, and extensive erudition, it would have been satisfactory to me to have examined his “Compendium Thereuticæ Universæ;” or at least the first part of it, devoted to the hunting of terrestrial animals.

The Alcon of Fracastor is in every one’s hands; being annexed to the editions of the Poetæ Venatici by Johnson and Kempher. It contains nothing on the subject of coursing.

To Michael Angelo Blondus or Biondi, we are indebted for the first hint on clothing greyhounds in the field, and for other matters connected with the discipline of the kennel and its inmates; and to Joannes Darcius, a truly classic poet of Venusium, not unworthy the natal town of Horace, for an elegant sketch of a hare-course, cited in the subsequent annotations.

It is singular that the greyhound, indigenous as we suppose him of Gallia Celtica, should have been so little noticed by his countrymen—that a variety of chase heretofore peculiar to Gaul should have been omitted in almost all the cynegetical works of Frenchmen of the olden time; and that the same omission should be chargeable on the moderns,—on the “Venerie Normande” of M. Le Verrier de la Conterie, the “Traité de Vénerie” of M. D’Yauville, and even, to a great extent, on the volume of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, which professes to be a “Dictionnaire de toutes les espèces de Chasses.”

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Savary of Caen published a Latin poem on hare-hunting in seven books,⁠[11] entitled “Album Dianæ Leporicidæ, sive Venationis Leporinæ leges,” of some rarity, but of little merit. He appears to have had an especial dislike to the canis Gallicus, anathematizing the ancient Celtic recreation in the very style of our own Somerville, who in many parts of “The Chase” seemingly had his eye on the poet of Caen:

The courser will scarce recognize his favourite dog in the slanderous abstract misnomer of “Lacedæmonii pernix violentia monstri.”

The celebrated works of Jaques du Fouilloux, and his contemporary Jean de Clamorgan, do not treat of the use of the greyhound, except merely “in setting back-sets, or receytes for deare, wolfe, foxe, or such like:” but in “the noble art of Venerie” by Turbervile and Gascoigne, in “the Jewell for Gentrie,” and the compilations of Gervase Markham, we find much illustration of the science and history of the leash in Great Britain.⁠[12]

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Turbervile, or whoever be the translator of Fouilloux, has appended an admirable breviary of coursing to “the booke of hunting:” and Wase’s Illustrations of Gratius p. 74.Wase notifies of Gervase Markham, that “he hath reported the fruits of his own experience, as in the whole cycle of husbandry accurately; so in Cynegetiques excellently.” His chapter on coursing with greyhounds⁠[13] is well worthy perusal; as is also the description of the “Leporarius” by Dr. Caius in his “Libellus de canibus Britannicis.”—Need I stop to remark the doubtful features of the “canis alter præpete cursu” of Vanière’s Prædium Rusticum?—Some few points belong apparently to the Celtic hound,

but his latrancy (“insequitur claris lepores latratibus”) would rather assign him to a different kennel. Works of a later date are too well known to need particular notice.

Very few are the improvements, either in the discipline of the courser’s kennel, or his practice in the field, transmitted to us by these collective cynegetica; and modern ingenuity has 13added little to our knowledge in any department of coursing, as the reader of the Nicomedian’s Manual will readily acknowledge. His remarks on the physical indications of excellence in greyhounds, and of speed and good blood,—derived from external shape and character generally,—on the unimportance of colour,—on the indications afforded by temper, tractability in the field, mode of feeding, &c. are perfect as far as they go. Arriani de VenationeNor can we improve on his kennel management, in feeding, bedding, (εὐνὴ μαλθακὴ καὶ ἀλεεινὴ), c. ix.rubbing down, (τρίψις τοῦ σώματος παντὸς,) exercising, c. x.alternated with confinement, &c. &c. As to slipping-law,c. xv. and the number of hounds to be slipped at once, his injunctions μήτε ἐγγύθεν ἐπιλύειν τῷ λαγῷ, μήτε πλείους δυοῖν, are strictly complied with at present by all fair sportsmen.

The Celts, it appears, had four different ways of coursing, all of which are practised by modern amateurs, according to their several tastes, and the nature of the countries in which they follow their sport.

The superior class of Celtic gentlemen, ὅσοι μὲν πλουτοῦσιν αὐτῶν καὶ τρυφῶσιν, employed persons to look out for hares in their forms, early in the morning, and to inform them by a messenger what success they had met with, before they left home themselves.

A second class, probably less opulent, and not able to afford the expense of hare-finders, mustered all their brother-amateurs, and beat the ground in regular array, abreast of each other. Both these parties were mounted on horseback; but a third class sallied forth on foot, and these, Arrian says, were really workmen at the sport, αὐτουργοὶ κυνηγεσίων: if any person 14accompanied the latter on horseback, he was ordered to keep up with the greyhounds. A fourth mode of coursing, sometimes adopted by them, was that of first loosing dogs of scent to find,c. xxi. and start the game, and then slipping the greyhounds, as soon as it came within sight.

Upon all of these different practices the father of the leash has entered most fully in his classical Manual: and if to these points we add his sensible remarks on the entering of puppies, on breeding, management after whelping, feeding and naming of young dogs, comparison of sexes, &c.; his merit will be allowed to be commensurate with his antiquity, and his enchiridion not only the earliest in the annals of the leash, but altogether the most abundant in valuable information.

It is foreign to my purpose and inclination to enter into a prolix defence of the courser’s pursuit, against the objections of its adversaries in the field or closet.Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. i. “I would not goe about,” in the words of Gervase Markham, “to elect and prescribe what recreation the husbandman should use, binding all men to one pleasure—God forbid! my purpose is merely contrary: for I know in men’s recreations, that nature taketh to herselfe an especiall prerogative, and what to one is most pleasant, to another is most offensive; some seeking to satisfie the mind, some the body, and some both in a joynt motion.”

We of the coursing fraternity prefer the “canis Gallicus,” and “arvum vacuum” of Ovid, as instrumental to our choicest diversion;

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but we do not forbid others

For the refined diversion of coursing may be as disagreeable to the fox-hunter, whose only joy is when

as it is delightful to the genuine amateur, on account of its chaste, and temperate, and contemplative quiet. King James, in his Βασιλικὸν Δῶρον, (himself, according to Sir Theodore Mayerne, “violentissimis olim venationis exercitiis deditus,”) praises “the hunting with running houndes, as the most honourable and noblest sort thereof,” and is supported by the high authority of Edmund de Langley, M. of G. fo. 64.Mayster of Game; adding “it is a thievish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and bowes, and greyhounde hunting is not so martiall a game.” B. i. c. 17.But on the other hand, Sir Thomas Elyot, in “The Governour,” speaking of “those exercises apte to the furniture of a gentylman’s personage,” and “not utterly reproved of noble autours, if they be used with oportunitie and in measure,” calls “hunting of the hare with grehoundes a ryght good solace for men that be studiouse, or theim to whom nature hathe not geven personage, or courage apte for the warres; and also for gentilwomen, which feare nether sonne nor wynde for appayryng their beautie. And peradventure they shall be therat lesse idell, than they shold be at home in their chaumbers.”—And the author of “The Booke of Hunting,” annexed to Turbervile’s Falconrie, concludes his treatise with the following singular panegyric “concerning coursing with greyhoundes”—“the which is doubtlesse a noble pastime, and as meet for 16nobility and gentleman, as any of the other kinds of Venerie before declared: especially the course of the hare, which is a sport continually in sight, and made without any great travaile: so that recreation is therein to be found without unmeasurable toyle and payne:⁠[14] whereas in hunting with hounds, although the pastime be great, yet many times the toyle and paine is also exceeding great: and then it may well be called, eyther a painfull pastime, or a pleasant payne.”

Coursing, more than the other laborious diversions of rural life, while it ministers to our moderate sensual enjoyment, admits also during the intervals of the actual pursuit of hound and hare, much rational reflection, opportunities of conversation with our brethren of the leash, and mental improvement. It tends, as Markham quaintly expresses himself, “to satisfie the mind and body in a joynt motion;” for in the beautiful poetry of a living patron of the Celtic dog, there is no interval of idleness with the well-read courser;

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But there are those who anathematize limiting and coursing, and other rural recreation, either as sinful,⁠[15] or indicative of barbarism and mental degradation, in the ratio of the pursuit. Like Cornelius Agrippa,De Incert. et Vanit. &c. c. lxxvii. they view venation in genere as the worst occupation of the worst of mankind; and say with Philip Stubbes, that The Anatomie of Abuses.“Esau was a great hunter, but a reprobat; Ismael, a great hunter, but a miscreant; Nemrode, a great hunter, but yet a reprobat, and a vessell of wrath;” and bid us, in the poetic badinage of the poet of Cyrene, leave off coursing:

swearing, with the melancholy Jaques,

But if “some habites and customes of delight” are allowable and indispensable to the “contentment” of the human 18mind, and “men of exceeding strickt lives and severity of profession” have indulged in rural diversions, why need we regard the severe reflections of the sensitive Monsieur Paschal, or his more modern plagiarists? why think that wisdom loves not the courser’s sport? or that man is degraded before the tribunal of sound reason by estimating aright the instinct of any of the creatures around him? or made sinful in the eyes of his Creator by availing himself of the adapted powers of the lowliest of the brute race, for the subjugation of such wild animals as were originally designed by a bountiful Creator for the sustenance and recreation of man? Cicero de Nat. Deor. L. ii. c. 63.“Canum verò tam incredibilis ad investigandum sagacitas narium, tanta alacritas in venando, quid significat aliud nisi se ad hominum commoditates esse generatos?”

The inference in regard to the chases and field sports generally is surely just, Manchester Memoirs V. i.“that man, by co-operating with such animals, employs both his and their faculties on the purposes for which they were partially designed: tending thereby to complete the bounteous scheme of Providence, the happiness and well-being of all its creatures.”

Mr. Warton, the talented historian of English Poetry, a bookful Academic, and not a μαθητὴς κυνηγεσίων, Xenophon de Venat. c. i.acquits the hunter of the charge of barbarism, and acknowledges that Hist. of Engl. Poetry, V. ii.“the pleasures of the chase seem to have been implanted by nature; and under due regulation, if pursued as a matter of mere relaxation, and not of employment, are by no means incompatible with the modes of polished life.”

The difference of opinion on the subject of the chase has arisen entirely from the different lights in which it has been viewed; the one exhibiting its rational use, the other its intemperate abuse. Encyclopédie Méthodique sur les Chasses, avertissement.“Elle a trouvé autant de censeurs outrés que d’apologistes enthousiastes, parmi les anciens et les modernes, parce qu’elle a été envisagée sous le double rapport de son utilité et de ses abus.”

Amongst the ancient eulogists, in the Grecian language, will be found Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, Polybius, and Julius Pollux; in the Latin, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Seneca, Pliny, Justin, Symmachus, and others. To which numerous phalanx of classic worthies there is no opponent authority, save that of Sallust: and of more recent days, Petrarch, and Cornelius Agrippa. Not to swell this prefatory matter with too many citations from obsolete languages, I have referred the reader, who may wish to know more of the éloges alluded to, severally to the passages in a note subjoined.⁠[16] But 20touching the adverse party, a word or two may be here admitted.

In appreciating the authority of Sallust’s sentiments on the subject of field-sports, as given in the studied preface of his Bell. Catal. c. i.Catilinarian War, “Non fuit consilium socordiâ atque desidiâ bonum otium conterere: neque verò, agrum colendo, aut venando, servilibus officiis intentum, ætatem agere;” we should remark the ambitious tone of pretended philosophy in which the introduction is written: “Nostra omnis vis in animo, et corpore sita est. Animi imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur; alterum nobis cum Diis, alterum cum belluis commune est.” And that this distinction between mental and 21corporeal qualities, their proper relation to each other, and the subordinate character of the latter to that of the former,

are kept up in the passage first adduced: in which he merely means to say that he does not wish to spend his time in slothful idleness; and that the rural vocations of agriculture and hunting, being of a secondary and inferior character, more connected with the body than the mind, are not agreeable to his taste, as the business and occupation of life, “ætatem agere.” And we must allow that the entire and constant dedication of time to practical agriculture, or rural sports, to the care of flocks and herds, or the kenneling and coursing of greyhounds, unvaried by such higher studies and pursuits as are characteristic of well-educated men, must be deemed, in polished life, rather lowly employment;—approachingArist. Polit. L. i. c. vii. too near to the class of occupations, which the Stagirite considers sordid and servile, as being exercised by the corporeal powers alone:—to avoid which, Sallust declares a decided preference to speculative over bodily activity; to the Historia Vitæ et Mortis.“vita in literis” over the “vita rusticana:” “quò mihi rectius videtur,” says he, “ingenii quàm virium opibus gloriam quærere.” Disclaiming that union of both, which we so much admire in the Athenian philosopher of the Scilluntian retreat, and his counterpart, the modern literary country gentleman; a fair example of an individual acting upon the twofold principle on which Mr. Addison regulated his conduct. “As a compound of soul and body, obliged to a double scheme of duties; and thinking that he has not fulfilled the business of the day, unless he has 22employed the one in labour and exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation.”

“It is not onely called Idelnes,” says Sir Thomas Elyot, “wherin the body or mynde cesseth from laboure, but specially ydelnes is an omission of al honest exercise.”

Passing over, for the present, the objections of Petrarch, let us pause for a moment on the vituperations of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa.Sir T. Elyot’s The Governour, B. i. c. xi. So confessedly crabbed a gentleman as this “noble clerke of Almayn,” can add but little weight to the scanty file of semi-classical oppositionists. Admitting in his dedication to Furnatius his mental approximation to the canine qualities of the metamorphosed Queen of Troy, H. C. Agrippa in Dedicat. D. Aug. Furnatio.“adeò ut ex ipsâ indignatione fermè cum Trojanâ illâ Hecubâ versus sum in canem, ac nullarum virium sim ad benè dicendum, nil amplius memini nisi mordere, oblatrare, maledicere, conviciari,” &c., his verdict cannot be received as that of a candid and unprejudiced adversary. The general contempt with which he visits all the arts and sciences, deprives his De Vanit. et Incert. &c. c. lxxvii.anti-cynegetical calumnies of much of their poignancy, and renders his “ars crudelis et tota tragica, cujus voluptas est in morte et in sanguine, quam ipsa deberet refugere humanitas,”⁠[17] &c. scarce worthy of the courser’s notice.⁠[18]

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The moderate and occasional recourse to field-diversions, with the same object that influenced Pliny in their pursuit, 24“ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur,” is not reprehensible, nor inconsistent with the due cultivation of the mind, and the fulfilment of the higher duties of life.

But “there is an especiall need,” observes Christopher Wase, in the preface of his translation of Gratius, after much just praise of hunting, “to hold a strict reine over our affections, that this pleasure, which is allowable in its season, may not entrench upon other domesticall affaires. We must consider that it wastes much time, and although it have its own praise, being an honest recreation and exercise, yet it is not of the noblest parts of life. There is great danger lest wee bee transported with this pastime, and so ourselves grow wild, haunting the woods till wee resemble the beasts which are citizens of them,⁠[19] and, by continual conversation with dogs, become altogether addicted to slaughter and carnage, which is wholly dishonorable, being a servile employment. For as it is the privilege of man, who is endued with reason, and 25authorized in the law of his creation to subdue the beasts of the field, so to tyrannize over them is plainly brutish.”

When field amusements are allowed to engross the whole of our attention, and in their pursuit to enslave, as it were, the mind to the body; when they become the ἔργα of life instead of the πάρεργα, its daily occupation, instead of the occasional recreation of its leisure hours;⁠[20] they constitute, as Rittershusius has well observed, a culpable θηρομανία, and certainly tend, by devoting the attention exclusively to inferior objects, to abridge the intellect of that sustenance which it should occasionally derive from more refined and important studies. “Fateor insitam esse nobis corporis nostri caritatem:Senecæ Epist. xiv. fateor nos hujus gerere tutelam: non nego indulgendum illi, serviendum nego.”

With such ultra-sportsmen the translator has no community of sentiment: nor will they experience from common sense less severity of reproofPetrarchæ Remed. Utriusque Fortunæ, Lib. i. Dial. 32. than “Reason” bestows on them in the dialogue with “Joy” in Petrarch’s “Remedia 26Utriusque Fortunæ.” “Ad honestum nihil idonei,” says Ratio, “sylvas colunt, non vitam solitariam acturi, cui non minùs quàm politicæ se ineptos sciunt, sed feris, ac canibus, et volucribus convicturi, quod non facerent, nisi illis similitudine aliquâ juncti essent: qui, si ex hoc voluptatem quandam, seu solam temporis fugam quærunt, utrinque stulti, voti compotes forsan evaserint. Sin, nescio quam, seu ingenii, seu magnificentiæ gloriam aucupantur, errant,” &c.⁠[21]

The whole dialogue is an admirable rebuke of the licentious sporting in the days of this extraordinary genius.⁠[22] “Hic amor, hæc felicitas, et hoc totum, quod Creatori Deo, quod altrici patriæ, quod parentibus, quod amicis redditis? Quis vos ferat, ad aliud natos, in his vivere, si modo vivitis, hoc agentes?” says “Reason:” and I confess that I am unable and unwilling to furnish “Joy” with a reply of defence; approving, as I do, of the joint worship of Minerva and Diana, recommended by Plin. Epist. L. ix. 10.Tacitus to his correspondent Pliny, and of making the health of the body conducive to that of the mind: 27“ut sua menti constet sanitas,” says Christopher Wase to William Lord Herbert, “et justum corpori accedat robur.”

It must ever be borne in mind that the illustrious heroes of Xenophon’s classic file acquired not their renown by hunting prowess alone, but by its union with moral and intellectual endowments:Xenophon. Cyneg. c. i. ἐκ τῆς ἐπιμελείας τῆς τῶν κυνῶν καὶ κυνηγεσίων καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἄλλης παιδείας πολὺ διενεγκόντες κατὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐθαυμάσθησαν. Chiron himself was invested with the privileges and science of the chase on account of his moral worth, διὰ δικαίοτητα—for he was δικαιοτάτος Κενταύρων. Orph. Argon. v. 377.And the numerous disciples of the craft, distinguished in the annals of the world as practical sportsmen, from Cephalus and Æsculapius to Æneas and Achilles, left other claims on the notice of posterity than thoseXenophon. Cyneg. c. i. attached to their characters as μαθηταὶ κυνηγεσίων.⁠[23]

28

But it is time to cease both praise and reprehension: of the latter I have been sparing; of the former, perhaps, too liberal. Symmachus, “the wordy champion of expiring Paganism,” checks his friend and correspondent Agorius in boasting too much of hisSymmachi Epist. L. i. E. 53. “nodosa retia vel pennarum formidines, et sagaces canes, omnemque rem venaticam, meliorum oblitus;” and suggests “quare cum scribis, memento facundiæ tuæ modum ponere. Rustica sunt et inculta, quæ loqueris, ut venator esse credaris.” Wherefore, being myself addicted only to one branch of the craft, viz. that of “greyhound-hunting,” in the phrase of our “pedant king,”

I am fearful of falling into the error of Agorius, and becoming obnoxious to the same rebuke. Enough, therefore: and now for an example.—Will the bookful recluse, the sedentary and learned oppositionist qualify the scorn with which he views our varied course of occupation in the library and the field, if we show him that our opinions and practice Symmachi Epist. L. v. 6.“liberalia studia sylvestri voluptate distinguere” are supported by a renowned example of antiquity; and direct his attention to the latter and sequestered part of the life “secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitæ” of the elder Xenophon,Xenophon. Anab. L. v. in contradiction of the refined antipathies of Sallust?—bid him contemplate the rival of Plato and Thucydides in his delightful retreat at Scillus, “under the protection of the temporal sovereignty of Lacedæmon, and the spiritual tutelage of Diana; diversifying the more refined pleasures of his studious hours with the active amusements of the field; breaking his dogs, training his horses, and attending to the breed of stock; registering the observations of his 29personal experience in these healthful pursuits with his own immortal pen; and affording an example to scholars in all ages, that they should not disdain to refresh their vigour, and renew their animation, by allowing the unharnessed faculties to recreate themselves freely in country sports, and exercise themselves agreeably in country business.”

I wish it were in our power to enrol the name of the accomplished Athenian among the first patrons of our particular branch of field-sports; but the greyhound was unknown to the son of Gryllus. We may, however, place the honour of the leash under the early patronage of his celebrated namesake: whose talents, as a military chief, were distinguished in the age in which he lived; whose works, as a philosopher and historian, have been transmitted with reputation to posterity, and continue to attract sufficient attention from the literary world, to embolden us in directing the notice of such of our opponents as consider the courser in a state of degraded existence, to the younger Xenophon, in his twofold capacity of a man of literature, and a patron of the leash. And we may conclude from the latter having been considered worthy the illustration of his pen, that coursing was not then classed with the “servilia officia” of rural life.

Before I proceed to the reasons which have induced me to lay before the public the following translation, I cannot resist availing myself of the opportunity, which a defence of the 30courser’s pursuit affords, of transcribing a spirited and highly poetical production of the late Mr. Barnard, of Brantinghamthorpe,[24] breathing the refined sentiments of a gifted scholar and ardent courser, fired at the idea of his favourite sport, his greyhounds, and his mountain thoughts being lightly or disdainfully received in the world’s esteem!

31

MY GREYHOUNDS.

But enough—

33

By my literary friends of the leash, who will alone probably condescend to open the following little treatise, it will be expected, after this too prolix defence of active field-amusements, and too selfish gratification of personal regret, that I should particularly state the reasons which have induced me to devote a few intervals of leisure to the version and illustration of an ancient courser, dignified byDecline and Fall, Vol. vii. c. 42. Mr. Gibbon with the title of “the eloquent and philosophic Arrian.”

But an objection in limine must be first answered to a modern reader giving up any of the “horæ vacivæ” of his library even to the perusal of the cynegetical writers of antiquity, much less to their collation; as treating forsooth of lowly animals, in their nature irrational and ferine.

Should any one address me in the language of the old nurse to Phædra—

or of Menedemus to Chremes—

I would reply, that I do not consider these authors as affording unsuitable mental recreation to any literary gentleman, be his vocation what it may; nor as rendering him amenable to the charge of Dr. Young of beingLove of Fame, Sat. i. “a polite apostate.”⁠[25] 34Saint Chrysostom, the most eloquent of the Greek fathers of the church, was so enamoured of Aristophanes, notwithstanding the malignity of his satire, his occasional obscenities, and licentious morals, as “to wake with him at his studies, and to sleep with him under his pillow:” and it was never “objected either to his piety or his preaching, even in those times of pure zeal and primitive religion.” To close the ancient cynegetica against the modern student, merely because the lowly quadruped, that gives a name to such works, forms a part of their subject-matter, pregnant in every page with innumerable other beauties, unconnected with the poor tyke, but scattered around him, would be (in an expressive simile of the Sir T. Elyot’s The Governour, B. i. c. xiii.author of “the Governour”) like “prohibiting a man to come into a fayre gardein, lest in gadring good and holsome herbes, he may happen to be stung with a netle”—“Semblaby yf a man doe rede wanton matter, myxt with wysdom, he putteth the worst under fote, and sorteth out the beste.”

But the “Scriptores Rei Venaticæ” are, of all others on the classic file, most chaste and pure of sentiment. The character bestowed by Price on Gratius in particular, is applicable to all collectively:

Their eminent beauties in poetry and prose, their fine moral reflections and religious aspirations, will bear comparison with the brightest productions of Greek and Roman literature, and can only be lightly esteemed, because they are little known. If a candid and susceptible reader, competent to enjoy their beauties, shall, after a perusal, deem his hours of recreative 35study mispent, I will acknowledge that I have lost a few days of my life. But he, who pretends to decide their claims to attention, must have a mind sensible of the beauties of nature, and of didactic poetry and prose, devoted to the illustration of objects in rural life: and so far, I think, from deeming it beneath the notice of man to mark the hand of Providence among the inferior beings of Creation, and to contemplate the fixed regulations under which they support the economy of the animal world, he will allow that it is rather the entertainment of a correctly-constituted mind to admire the originals in the natural world, and the descriptions of their habits, and the modes of applying them to the service and amusement of mankind in the works of learned men. With such sketches of animal life the cynegetical writers abound: and Oppian, more especially, with the poetic pen of a philosophic naturalist, deduces from the habits of irrational creatures precepts worthy of enrolment in the code of a moralist.

With such instructions, too, for rendering animal powers subservient to the recreation and support of mankind, the works of Xenophon, Arrian, and others De Re Venaticâ are plentifully stored.

Let us hear then no more of the unworthiness of these authors or their subjects—Aristot. de Part. Animal. L. i. c. v.διὸ δεῖ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν παιδικῶς τὴν περὶ τῶν ἀτιμωτέρων ζώων ἐπίσκεψιν. I know the study of them to be eminently entertaining, and believe it to be equally innocent and instructive. Our higher and more grave studies are 36pleasantly diversified by such intermixture, and the mind returns from its lighter to its more serious avocations with renewed vigour.—Lucian. Hist. Veræ, L. i.τοῖς περὶ λόγους ἐσπουδακόσιν ἡγοῦμαι προσήκειν μετὰ τὴν πολλὴν τῶν σπουδαιοτέρων ἀνάγνωσιν ἀνεῖναί τε τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἔπειτα κάματον ἀκμαιοτέραν παρασκευάζειν.

The amusement derived from the Cynegeticus of Arrian, its terse, elegant language, and valuable information, has been my principal inducement to present it to the patrons of the leash in an English dress; that those who might never have read the original, and might be unwilling, or, like Miramont in “the Elder Brother,”Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Elder Brother, act ii. sc. i. (who could “speak no Greek,” and held “the sound sufficient to confirm an honest man” without a knowledge of its sense) unable to peruse it, might have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the first author who had treated systematically of coursing. For “those,” says Christopher Wase in his preface to Gratius, “which are curious artisans, doe not content themselves that they have attained to so great perfection in their art, but are extremely pleased to look back and reflect upon the periods and steps whereby that art hath made its graduall progresse; if perchance by comparing the former with the latter, even the present state of it may be advanced.”

It was my wish that the copy should read like an original: and if I have failed in this respect, as I fear and feel I have, (for such an object is attended with far greater difficulties of attainment than the inexperienced may suppose,) the failure must be attributed to a fearfulness of assuming too great a licence of translation, and departing too far from the letter of the original—a fear of paraphrasing instead of translating my author; whose lively and spirited language indicates a power of 37description, and accurate knowledge of his subject, to which no translation could do justice, but by as faithful an adherence as the different idioms of different languages would allow. Under this impression, I have spared no pains in rendering the version with fidelity, deeming truth and perspicuity more essential than embellishment of language. For it has been well observed by Mr. Pope in his preface to the Iliad, that “it is the first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and unmaimed.” And again, “it is certain no literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a version almost literal.”

If however this translation should be deemed too close and literal, and greater freedom of language desired in a little coursing manual; I am willing to plead guilty to the fault. Still if its style and manner can neither be defended nor excused on the grounds stated, I trust they will be pardoned, because they are acknowledged.

I am fully sensible that what I have done, might have been done by others far better. For though an occasional worshipper of the classic Minerva—“parcus ... cultor et infrequens.” I know that there are, under the tutelage of Diana, many disciples who have been more richly endowed by 38the goddess of wisdom, and are better qualified for this undertaking. If, however, I have the good fortune to direct the attention of the more learned patrons of the leash to a manual scarce known among them, and to excite the same degree of interest in their minds, which its first perusal excited in my own; I shall rest satisfied that the errors and deficiencies of this attempt will induce them to devote superior knowledge of the Greek language, and greater experience in coursing, to decorating the Athenian Sportsman with an English dress, more becoming the antiquity of his claim to distinction.

Individuals possessed of great accuracy of knowledge in Greek literature, or what Schneider calls “ἀκρίβεια Græcæ doctrinæ,” united to extensive experience in field-sports, must necessarily be rare; and till such shall undertake an improvement on the present version, it may pass its ordeal of utility with the public. Moderate love of the diversion, and moderate experience in the field or on the plain, I conceive to be as indispensable as an acquaintance with the language of the original text to the translator of a courser’s enchiridion, or he will not work in it con amore, Demetrii Constantinop. Hieracosophii i.(πρόδηλον γὰρ εἰ μή τις ἔρως ἐπί τινι παρακολουθήσει πράγματι, ἀμήχανον τοῦτο κατορθωθῆναι,) nor acquit himself to the satisfaction of his readers.

To classic coursers I would particularly recommend the perusal and reperusal of the Greek original; for I am confident that it is far more worthy of their attention than the English version; which “is submitted to the correction and amendment of those worthy and well-knowing gentlemen,” 39under the hope that it may escape the severity of acrimonious criticism, as the work of a retired countryman, with no learned resources at hand, beyond a library moderately furnished with classic authorities, and writings illustrative of some departments of natural history. I wish I had been endowed with all the qualities essential to a more perfect performance. But such as it is, “I crave,” with an old Chronicler, “that it may be taken in good part. I wishe I had bene furnished with so perfect instructions, and so many good gifts, that I might have pleased all kindes of men, but that same being so rare a thing in any one of the best, I beseech thee (gentle reader) not to looke for it in me the meanest.”

Difficulty has occurred in rendering the ancient technical terms of a courser’s manual, with any degree of elegance, in a modern tongue—“ornari res ipsa negat.” This has partly arisen—

and partly from the corresponding English terms being debased into vulgarity by an usage too familiar to be pleasant to polite ears. Expressions of this kind in Arrian are occasioned by the accuracy which he affects in the most minute particulars connected with the subject of coursing, the shape of Celtic dogs, the discipline of the kennel and field, the breeding of whelps, &c.

In relation to this and other defects, it is requested of all my brethren of the leash, in behalf of the oldest courser who has written on their manly diversion, that whatever may appear inelegant, dull, or uninteresting in the following little work, may be laid to the account of the translator: the errors of 40whose style and execution ought not to affect the intrinsic merits of the Cynegeticus.

Many classical quotations have been introduced in the notes to elucidate and enliven the text; some in their original language, others in the English tongue. Where the former appeared more illustrative and expressive, it has been retained. The latter has been occasionally substituted, where the passages selected conveyed information acceptable to an English courser, or a version of acknowledged merit faithfully conveyed the sense of the original. And in a few instances the original and translation have been introduced in juxta-position, to enable the reader to judge of their respective excellencies. To this too I have been “moved,” as Wase very nicely observes, by a wish that the quotations from the dead languages “may be understood with ease, and the delight of attending to the elegancies in them rather doubled than intermitted, by adjoyning a translation in equal consort:” “wherein,” as he adds, “I shall have pleased either those that have an affection to see our language enriched with the wit of former ages; or on the other side, even those men whose inclinations do rather move to look upon the native beauties of every piece.”

The references to antiquity, which have imperceptibly increased to some extent,—“nec dubitamus multa esse, quæ et nos præterierint, homines enim sumus, et occupati officiis,”—have not been introduced for the sake of ostentatious display of knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, like those

41

but that the classical courser might be induced “antiquos exquirere fontes,”

to compare the beauties and defects of the several authors who have treated on the same favourite subject; and that the issue of the comparison might be the illustration of the Nicomedian courser.

To the classic reader (“cui nihil neque non lectum est, neque non intellectum”) no apology is necessary for the number of the extracts made from writers who must ever be prized, while pure and correct taste prevails: and to the courser, who with his academic gown has laid on the shelves of his library the authors of Greece and Rome, to be no more disturbed, like “the rude forefathers” of the rustic cemetery,

and who “wonders” with Sir John Daw in “The Silent Woman,” that “those fellows have such credit with gentlemen;” there is a summary power vested in himself, of reducing the number to the measure of his own taste and capacity. Such, however, not having been the fate of Churchill “The Author.”“the crabbed authors” with myself, I confess that I have found it difficult to check my pen in transcribing apposite and explanatory quotations from these early friends. For in the language of old Gervase, “the minde being preoccupied and busied with a vertuous search, is ever ready to catch hold of whatsoever can adorne or illustrate the excellencie of the thing in which it is imployed.”

42

This, I trust, will be received as an apology; and that the practical notes interspersed with the classical, will redeem my character as a moderate amateur of the sport, and give admission to this translation on the courser’s table.

With the exception of Somerville, “who has shown,” as Dr. Johnson observes, “by the subjects which his poetry has adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a man of letters,” I have extracted very little from writers of the last century: but the natural historians, poetic and prosaic authors of the olden time, whose works are not of very common occurrence in our libraries, have afforded much information confirmatory of Arrian’s opinions. These selections, as well as those from ancient English authors, incorporated with this preface, have been left in their original spelling, so happily expressed by Specimens of English Poets, Vol. i. p. 11.Mr. Ellis as “that fortuitous combination of letters, which the original transcribers or printers had assigned to them.”

A knowledge of what others have written on a subject on which we ourselves are about to write appears indispensable. “Although I were very much experienced,” says the translator of Gratius, “in any art, and were apt to conceive a good opinion of my own ability therein, yet being to publish a discourse concerning it, I was obliged to inform myself of what others had formerly proposed in the same matter, as far as may conveniently be attained. There are some who esteem it glory to be thought to have declined any other helps but 43their own wit, which I should charge upon myself as negligence.” Far be such self-sufficiency from me! I am ever glad to avail myself of the opinions and sentiments of others; and in so doing, to give the merit of originality to its rightful owner, and not to a modern plagiarist. Plin. in Præfat. Vespas.“Est enim benignum ut arbitror, et plenum ingenui pudoris, fateri per quos profeceris, non ut plerique ex iis, quos attigi, fecerunt. Scito enim conferentem autores me deprehendisse à juratissimis et proximis veteres transcriptos ad verbum, neque nominatos,” &c.

Few will think me sparing of citation: but if there be such a one, and well disposed to a brother courser, Ausonius Symmacho. Griphus.“si bonus est, quæ omisi, non oblita mihi, sed præterita existimet. Dehinc qualiscunque est, cogitet secum, quàm multa de his non reperisset, si ipse quæsisset. Sciat enim me non omnibus erutis usum;” I hope he will not add with Ausonius, “et quibusdam oblatis abusum.”

Should curiosity induce any one to inquire who is the translator of this treatise, let it suffice, that he is an humble individual of retired habits, too utterly unknown to the world to expect that any additional interest will be imparted to his labours by the publication of the name of their author:—that he is in the enjoyment of the ease and freedom of a private scene, where, in the felicitous language of Sir W. Temple, On Gardening Miscell. Pt. ii.“a man may go his own way and his own pace:”—that his 44pursuits at home and abroad are rationally diversified. “For honest pleasures,” like Brathwait’s gentleman, “he is neither so Stoicall as wholly to contemne them, nor so Epicureall as too sensually to affect them.” “There is no delight on mountaine, vale, coppice, or river, whereof he makes not an usefull and contemplative pleasure;”

But his “hour-beguiling pastime,” when not occupied in any of the more important duties of life, Plin. Panegyr. Trajan. 81.“si quandò cum influentibus negotiis paria fecit, instar refectionis,” is that of a theoretical and practical courser—desirous of acquiring, in the sedentary retirement of his library, the science of active enjoyment in the field; and of elucidating the mysteries of the leash, and the pertinent anecdotes of animal biography, by collecting in one point of view the scattered glimmerings of classical antiquity, and the illustrations of more modern days, relative to an elegant and manly diversion:—directing the whole under the guidance of experience, and the name of the father of the leash, to the advancement of human recreation.

The translator has his hack, his greyhound, and his slipper, (κυναγωγὸς,) participating of the unimportant character of their master, and equally devoid of interest in the eyes of the public. 45All, therefore, are consigned to the same fate, and merged in one common namelessness; spite of the example of Hippamon of old, in the metrical commemoration of his sporting establishment:

With regard to the Appendix,

I have only a few remarks to make. To many, though mere sciolists in natural history, it must have appeared, during their progress in classical reading, that much ignorance of the varieties of the canine race is shown by annotators. With the gentlemen è societate Jesu, and others who have favoured us with their expositions of the ancients, there is too great an inclination to generalize both as to the names and properties of the canine tribe. The “veloces Spartæ catuli”⁠[26] are all “lévriers,” though there was not, according to Arrian, (and he is supported by Blumenbach,) a greyhound in the whole of ancient Greece: and certainly as “the babbling echo 46mocked them” in their quick-scented pursuit of the Laconian quarry, they could be no more entitled to the appellation, than any sharp-nosed mongrel, bred in modern days, between a sagacious yelping hound, and a prick-eared shepherd’s cur. Upon the same principle of generalization, all truculent Molossi, C. Custodes, Pecuarii, &c. are by these worthies at once dismissed as Gallicè “dogues,” Anglicè “mastiffs,” without an attempt to particularize their respective attributes in warfare, or the chase, or the economy of rural life.

This confusion of nomenclature might pass at school, but not longer. Subsequent experience, and the reflection of maturer years would direct the attention of many literary ruralists to the occasional correction of errors in the canine vocabulary. Such at least has been the case with the writer of these pages; and he conceives that errors, apparent to him, must have been manifest to others. Nor is a misapprehension of some of the names and qualities of the individuals of this multifarious genus

to be wondered at in scholiasts and commentators; when we consider their monkish habits of indolent seclusion, and how unfit and unwilling they were to ascertain by actual experiment,47 whether Pliny was correct in affirming that Minerva was as fond of traversing the hills as Diana. A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, &c.“These bookish fellowes,” in the words of Sir John Harrington, “could judge of no sports, but within the verge of the fair fields of Helicon, Pindus, and Parnassus.” Their practice in the field was not commensurate with their scholastic knowledge. Very few carried their note-books, like the learned and indefatigable Vlitius to the covert side, and examined the difficulties of rural poetry, and obscure allusions to canine instinct in the field of experience. And unless they did so, they had little chance of becoming acquainted with the sylvan goddess, who tells us in her petition to her sire, that she rarely descends from her mountain haunts into the cities of men;

Wherever the different sporting dogs of antiquity are alluded to, or mentioned by name in the Cynegeticus of Arrian, or the classical works to which I have had occasion to refer in illustration of it, I have endeavoured to clear up some of the obscurity, in which they were enveloped; by classifying varieties, and in a few cases even individuals, and comparing ancient types with modern representatives. This I have attempted more especially in relation to the ancient British dogs, and the Celtic greyhound (the subject of Arrian’s Treatise), as being of paramount interest to the British courser.

The observations and extracts on these points, more trite 48probably than recondite, have been thrown together in an appendix, which I hope may be found amusing to any literary sportsman who may condescend to peruse them.

---

49

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
AND
BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTICES.

50

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51

---

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
OF THE
CYNEGETICUS,
OR
WORK ON COURSING.

---

The Cynegeticus was originally written by Arrian, in imitation of Xenophon’s Treatise de Venatione, to supply the lacunæ of that work in the particular department of Coursing.

The manuscript seems to have been neglected in the Vatican library for several years after it had been first discovered, in consequence of its bearing the name of Xenophon: for the persons who accidentally met with it, not being aware of Arrian’s assumption of that title, took no pains to examine it, under an impression that it was the edited Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and not a new and unknown treatise on a different branch of the same subject, by an author of the same assumed name, a pseudo-Xenophon.

We are told by Mausacus that Rigaltius intended to have edited it with the Scriptores de Re Accipitrariâ et de Curâ Canum, (the first edition of which he published in 1612, with a forged epistle in Castilian and Latin from Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion to a Ptolemy, King of Egypt,) but the 52printers refused their consent, unless he added a Latin translation; a desideratum which was afterwards supplied by Holstein in the first edition. Henry Stephens, however, had previously perused the unpublished treatise, and given to the world, in his Schediasmata, some observations on different passages.

Holstein, the first editor, was a celebrated scholar of his day, and is commemorated in the Sept. Illustr. Vir. Poemata as—

His edition issued from the Paris press of Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy in the year 1644. The Greek text, and version attached to it, were amended by Blancard in his Amsterdam edition of 1683; which contains also the minor works of Arrian, and the pertinent schediasmata of Henry Stephens above mentioned. My library affords no editions but the above two, and the accurate reprint of Schneider by the University of Oxford in 1817. The last is certainly the best edition of the Cynegeticus of Arrian which I have seen. The Clarendon press also published in the same volume the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and his Opuscula Politica; the same collection of the minor works as Zeune comprehended in one volume, printed at Leipsic, 1778.

M. Gail is reported to have published a French translation of the work, with critical notes and dissertations, at Paris, in 1801: but, notwithstanding repeated applications to the Parisian booksellers, I have not been able to procure a copy. Equally unsuccessful have been my endeavours to obtain from the same source Defermat’s version, published by Hortemels of Paris, in 1690. The latter, however, in consequence of the literary character given of its author by Belin de Ballu, in his prolegomena to Oppian, I do not much regret. It accompanied53 a French version of the two last books of the Cynegetics of the Cilician poet, which are stated to abound in errors of translation, and to be performed in a tedious and barbarous style by Defermat, eminent as a mathematician, but of moderate attainment in Greek literature.

The present version was completed before I was aware of any prior attempt to translate the Cynegeticus into English: the first notice of which, in the partial labours of Mr. Blane, was derived from Schneider’s annotations. I do not believe any other to exist in the English language, with the exception of such fragments of the treatise as may have been occasionally made to speak English, on the emergency of a periodical publication needing an article on Coursing; or a literary sportsman wishing to enliven his communications by a reference to the manual, and quoting it in his vernacular tongue.

Mr. Blane’s attempt did not extend apparently to the whole treatise. It is in parts inaccurately executed, and omits numerous sentences, where he professes to translate; and whole chapters in sequence, where we can see no reason for omission. The fourth, and ten following chapters to the fourteenth inclusive, and the twenty-third and twelve following chapters to the thirty-fifth inclusive, are entirely omitted by this capricious translator. Since, then, in a work consisting of only thirty-five chapters, he has, without assigning any cause, passed over twenty-four unnoticed, nearly all of them important to practical coursers, some evincing the kindly feelings of their author, (as for instance, the one containing the affectionate history of his beloved dog Hormé,) and others most honourable to his humanity, and confirmative of the purity of his religious faith, operative in a heathen breast, (as the two closing chapters, showing, amidst much fabulous allusion, his unreserved acknowledgment of human dependence on divine aid, and the certainty of evil and misfortune being consequent on irreligion and moral transgression,) I hope a complete translation of this ancient courser’s enchiridion will not be considered an useless undertaking.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ARRIAN.

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Mr. Addison has remarked, that “a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married, or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.” If, however, the satisfaction of perusing the Cynegeticus of Arrian be dependent on a previous acquaintance with these personal particulars of their author, I fear the modern reader will regret the insufficiency of the following biographical notice. Scanty as it is, it contains all the information I have been able to collect relative to the younger Xenophon.⁠[27]

Flavius Arrianus⁠[28] was a citizen both of Athens and Rome, of Grecian extraction, and born probably in the reign of Domitian, at Nicomedia, a celebrated city of Bithynia; where, according to Photius on the authority of our author’s “Bithynica,”55 a lost work on the subject of his native country, he was priest of Ceres and Proserpine, to whom the city of Nicomedia was sacred. His fondness for polite literature, and celebrity for philosophical knowledge, acquired him the honour of the twofold citizenship. Arriani Bithynica et Parthica apud Photii Eclogas.But, though a friend and disciple of Epictetus, and the first recorder of his Stoical Apophthegms—φιλόσοφος μὲν ἐπιστήμην, εἷς τῶν ὁμιλητῶν Ἐπικτήτου, he appears, like the elder Xenophon, to have been much engaged in military affairs; and as Roman prefect of Cappadocia, in the reign of Hadrian, to have taken an active part in the war against the Alani and Massagetæ, a people bred to eternal warfare—

It is related by Dion Cassius, and the epitomizer Xiphilin, that the Scythian barbarians under Pharasmanes having committed great havock and spoil in Media, (A.D. 136.) had begun to threaten Armenia and Cappadocia; Dion. Cassii Hist. Roman. L. lxix.but finding Flavius Arrianus, the prefect of the latter province, better prepared for their reception than they had anticipated, they were induced, partly by the bribes of Vologæsus, and partly through fear of the governor, to retire from the territory under his jurisdiction.

Suidas, on the authority of Heliconius, states that Arrian was advanced to the senatorial and consular dignities, and that he was denominated “the second Xenophon” from the sweetness of his literary style. And Photius also, in his “Eclogæ,” speaking of our author’s “Parthica” observes, ἐπωνόμαζον αὐτὸν Ξενοφῶντα νέον· διὰ δὲ τὸ παιδείας ἐπίσημον, ἄλλας τε πολιτικὰς ἀρχὰς ἐπιστεύθη, καὶ εἰς τὸ τῶν ὑπάτων ἀνέβη τέλος: and again he adds, δῆλον δὲ ὡς οὐδὲ ῥητορικῆς σοφίας τε καὶ δυνάμεως ἀπελείπετο.

Like his namesake, as I have remarked, he united the character of a man of letters with that of a warrior, dedicating 56a great portion of his time to philosophical and historical research. But it is not my intention to enlarge on his literary character in general, nor to enter in detail into the merits of his several compositions.

His principal historical work, “The Anabasis of Alexander, though composed,” says Dr. Robertson, “long after Greece had lost its liberty, and in an age when genius and taste were on the decline, is not unworthy the purest times of Attic literature.” And his “Indian history is one of the most curious treatises transmitted to us from antiquity.” The latter may be considered an episode to the former. It is partly historical and partly geographical, and will be found to contain a fund of entertainment.

On the model of the Socratic Xenophon, he committed to writing the dictates of Epictetus, during the philosopher’s lifetime, and published them as his dissertations:—⁠[29]subsequently compiling his Enchiridion or manual—a brief compendium of all the principles of his master, and acknowledged to be one of the most valuable and beautiful pieces of morality extant.

His Periplus of the Euxine, in the form of a letter from its author to the Emperor, contains an accurate topographical survey of the coast of that sea,

from the commencement of his voyage at Trapezus, within his own prefecture of Cappadocia, to its completion at Byzantium; and was written probably while he held his office of command in the province, a short time before the breaking out of the 57war against the Alani. Many learned men, as Ramusius, Ortelius, and others, have doubted whether he wrote the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which sometimes passes under his name; indeed the late Dean of Westminster says positively “it is not the work of Arrian of Nicomedia:” but his claim to the Circumnavigation of the Euxine has never been disputed. It was compiled expressly for the Emperor; who, according to Spartian and Dion Cassius, was particularly attached to geographical research, and had visited in person a large portion of his extensiveEutropii L. viii. dominions—“orbem Romanorum circumivit.” The elder Xenophon is spoken of, sub initio, by our scientific geographer, in the same relative terms, as in the Cynegeticus, ὡς λέγει ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἐκεῖνος, and it is fair to infer that the Periplus and Cynegeticus are the works of the same individual.

In his Tactics, written, as he states himself, in the 20th year of the reign of Hadrian, there is a brief account of former writers on this subject, and a description of the order and arrangement of an army in general: but in the “Acies contra Alanos,” a short and imperfect fragment annexed thereto, the particular instructions,⁠[30] which were delivered by him as general, for the march of the Roman army against the northern barbarians, are minutely given.

Fragments of other historical works, supposed to have been written by him, are preserved by the learned and indefatigable patriarch of Constantinople—“The History of Events subsequent to Alexander’s Death, in 10 books,” “The Parthica, in 17 books,” and “Bithynica, in 8 books.” Under the review of the first of which works, the Byzantine has left us his opinion58 of Arrian as an historiographer, and of the style of his compositions: ἀνὴρ οὐδενὸς τῶν ἄριστα συνταξαμένων ἱστορίας δεύτερος, κ. τ. λ.

Of the Libellus de Venatione, the treatise on Coursing, I have already made mention; and shall merely add, what is in some degree pertinent to the subject, that there seems to have been a strong similarity of taste between Hadrian and our author. The Emperor, like his prefect, was not only intimately conversant withEutropii L. viii. Greek and Latin literature, “facundissimus Latino sermone, Græco eruditissimus,” but also passionately fond of the chase. While living in his native town of Italica in Spain, Spartian tells us, he bore the title of Græculus, and was, at the same time, “venandi usque ad reprehensionem studiosus—equos et canes sic amavit, ut eis sepulchra constitueret.” To such a height did he carry this regard, that, according to Xiphilin, he graced a monument to the memory of his beloved hunter Borysthenes, with an inscription written by his own pen:

For all which unbounded affection for the brute creation, the reader may remember, De Remediis U. F. L. i. D. xxxii.he incurs the severity of Petrarch’s satire in the dialogue “de Venatu et Aucupio.”

Whether the similarity of Arrian’s rural diversions to those of Hadrian in early life, co-operated with other causes to his elevation by so capricious and eccentric a patron, must ever remain doubtful. He is not mentioned by name in the biography of Hadrian by Spartian: where it is stated, in general terms only, of this singular Emperor, that he was on terms of familiar intimacy with Epictetus, Heliodorus, and all grammarians, rhetoricians, &c. Of his acquaintance with the eminent men of his capital there can be no doubt, and his roving disposition 59must have introduced such to his notice in the colonies and more distant parts of the empire. One, therefore, who had been following the same pursuits with himself from his youth upwards, a sportsman, a military tactician, and a joint friend of Epictetus, was not likely to escape him. Besides, we are assured that he was, on all occasions, sociable in his field amusements, “venationem semper cum amicis participavit;” and therefore we may suppose that the literary founder of Adrianotheræ would gladly avail himself of the earliest opportunity of adding to his personal friends and sporting associates the most accomplished writer and courser of his day. We know how much the pleasure of intercourse is enhanced by identity of pursuit; and how strong the hold which innocent amusements, shared with congenial friends, have on our affections!

As to the period of his life at which Arrian may be supposed to have written the Cynegeticus, the inference to be drawn from the meagre paragraph of autobiography in the first chapter, wherein he states his fitness to supply the deficiencies of the elder Xenophon’s work,De Venat. c. i. from having been ἀμφὶ ταὐτὰ ἀπὸ νέου ἐσπουδακὼς, κυνηγέσια καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ σοφίαν, although it establishes the fact of his early predilection for field sports, yet it rather militates against the idea of the Cynegeticus having been written at a very early period of the author’s life. However, be this as it may, his patronage of “the long dogs” continued at the time of his writing this libellus; and his belovedEjusdem c. v. Ὁρμὴ, ὠκυτάτη, καὶ σοφωτάτη, καὶ ἱεροτάτη, was then in his possession, living seemingly in the closest intimacy with his attached and philosophic master, and sharing with Megillus his society at home and abroad, the well-earned recompense in 60declining years of the excellence he had manifested in the vigour of his youthful days on the coursing plain; where, in Arrian’s own words of eulogy, τέτταρσιν ἤδη ποτὲ λαγωοῖς ἐφ’ ἡλικίας ἀντήρκησεν.⁠[31]

Antiquity is almost silent relative to the personal history of the younger Xenophon;⁠[32] and as an autobiographer, he seems to have been desirous that nothing should be known of himself or family; but rather that his personal history should be darkened under the doubtful celebrity of anonymous authorship, or merged in the somewhat arrogant assumption of a fictitious and equivocal title. In the conclusion of the 12th chapter of the 1st book of his History of Alexander’s Anabasis, he says that the number and magnitude of the exploits of the son of Philip, were his inducement to record them, not deeming himself altogether unworthy to transmit them to posterity.Arrian. de Exped. Alexand. L. i. c. xii. Vide Raphelii annotat. in loc. “But who I am,” he continues, “that thus characterise myself, and what my name, (though far from obscure,) it concerns the reader but little to know. Neither would an account of my family, my city, nor such offices as I have there borne, be of any use to him. Be it sufficient for him to know, that an ardent love of literature, in which I have constantly indulged myself from youth, has been with me instead of family connexion, and civic and magisterial honours. Wherefore I may perhaps be little less worthy of a place among the most celebrated authors of Greece, than Alexander among her most illustrious heroes.”

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After the brief sketch which I have given of the writings of the younger Xenophon, it must strike every one that he was influenced in the choice of his subjects as an author, by a recollection of what had engaged the literary attention of his celebrated namesake; and that while writing under the same personal appellative, he probably proposed to imitate the matter and style of composition of hisPhot. Eclog. Arrian. Parthica. prototype—ἰσχνὸς τὴν φράσιν, καὶ μιμητὴς ὡς ἀληθῶς Ξενοφῶντος.

Under this view of his works we have the dissertations of Epictetus from the pen of his most renowned follower, the Bithynian Xenophon, and the Memorabilia of Socrates from that of the son of Gryllus, the most eminent disciple of the Socratic school: the Anabasis of Alexander for that of Cyrus, with the same distribution of the work into seven books, and the same title. The Hellenica of Xenophon gave birth to the Parthica and Bithynica of Arrian: and in imitation of the Essay on Hunting, our pseudo-Xenophon has left us his Observations on Coursing.

Upon their general similarity of character in active life I have already remarked, and shall only observe farther, that, as far as we can judge from the scanty personal anecdotes which have survived of the younger, for comparison with those of the elder philosopher, this similarity appears to have extended to the frame and composition of their minds. Many of the same excellencies, and respectable weaknesses of character, co-existed in both; the same patient and unerring virtue—the same kind and generous feeling—the same credulous and enthusiastic regard to celestial admonitions—πειθομένους τεράεσσι θεῶν—with a proportionate degree of the purest heathen piety.

If it be stigmatised with the title of superstitious credulity in the priest of Ceres, that he supposed himself led by divine inspiration to write the history of a man,De Expedit. Alexandri L. vii. c. xxx. οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ ἀνθρώπων ἐοικὼς, I would plead his enthusiastic admiration of his hero in 62palliation of the fond supposition, qualified as it is, with equal good sense and piety, in the concluding sentences of the Anabasis; where he states that as so extraordinary a person as Alexander could not have risen up in the world without divine interference—οὐδ’ ἔξω τοῦ θείου; so, with admiration of his good qualities, and reprobation of his bad ones, with a strict regard to truth, and public utility, he professes himself his historian, writing, as he verily believes, under the same divine influence that first gave being to the subject of his memoir.

Surely such a belief in heavenly interference, exciting its professor to what is just and honourable, and deterring him from every breach of propriety, as an historian of truth, must be applauded by every fair and impartial judge of human character; and more particularly so, when in the person of a Stoic, unenlightened by any philosophy but that of Epictetus, it could have no other foundation than innate rectitude of mind.

Under the conviction that Arrian’s expectation of posthumous fame has been realized in general, and that my brethren of the leash will award him particular honour as the first writer of a Courser’s Manual, I conclude this brief sketch of his life and literary labours; which might have been more full, if his biography by Dion Cassius had come down to us.

As the compiler of the Stoical philosophy of “the Phrygian Slave,” the historian of the son of Philip,⁠[33] the hydrographer of the Euxine, a military tactician, a warrior-prefect, and a 63classic courser, he has left works behind him which will endure as long as literature itself;—he has done all in his power to benefit and instruct mankind in various departments of human learning;—has contributed his mite to the advancement of rational science and healthful recreation, and proved himself worthy of the immortality he so fondly anticipated.

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ARRIAN ON COURSING.

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Οὐ γάρ τοι οὐδ’ ἴσος ὁ ἀγὼν λαγωῷ καὶ κυνί· ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν, ὅποι βούλεται, θεῖ, ἡ δὲ ἄλλῳ ἐφομαρτεῖ· καὶ ὁ μὲν ἐξελίξας τὸν δρόμον καὶ διαῤῥίψας τὴν κύνα ἴεται τοῦ πρόσω, ἡ δὲ, εἰ διαῤῥιφθείη, πλάζεται· καὶ ἀνάγκη φθάσαντα αὖ μεταθεῖν καὶ ἀναλαβεῖν, ὅσον ἐξηνέχθη τοῦ δρόμου.—Arrian. de Venat. c. xvii.

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Chap. I.
Preface.The advantages that accrue to mankind from hunting, and the regard of the Gods for those instructed in it by Chiron,⁠[34] and their honourable distinction throughout Greece, have been related by Xenophon, the son of Gryllus.

He has pointed out the similitude between Cynegetical and Military science;⁠[35] and the age, constitution, and frame of mind,⁠[36] 68that essentially qualify for entering on the chase;—has given a description of purse-nets, hayes, and road-nets,⁠[37] such as are necessary to be prepared—the mode of fixing snares for animals that may be entrapped⁠[38]—the natural history of hares, their food, haunts, forms, and the method of searching for them—what dogs are clever at scenting, and what faulty—and how, by their shape and work, each may be ascertained. Some few remarks are also left by him on the boar-hunt, the stag, bear, and lion chases—how these animals may be taken by cunning and stratagem.

The omissions of his work (which do not appear to me to have arisen from negligence, but from ignorance of the Celtic breed of dogs,⁠[39] and the Scythian and African horses,) I shall69 endeavour to fill up: being his namesake and fellow-citizen,⁠[40] of similar pursuits with himself, as a sportsman, a general, and a philosopher—writing under the same feeling that actuated him, when he thought fit to amend the imperfections of Simon’s work on horsemanship;⁠[41] not out of rivalry with its author, but from a conviction that his labours would be useful to mankind.

Chap. II.In my opinion no proof is required that Xenophon was ignorant of the Celtic breed of dogs, beyond this:⁠[42] Proofs of Xenophon’s ignorance of Celtic Dogs. that the nations inhabiting that district of Europe were unknown,⁠[43] 70except the parts of Italy occupied by the Greeks,⁠[44] and those with whom they had commercial intercourse by sea. And 71that he was unacquainted with any other breed of dogs, resembling the Celtic in point of swiftness, is evident from these words:—“whatever hares,” he says, “are caught by dogs, become their prey, contrary to the natural shape of the animal, or accidentally.”⁠[45] Now, if he had been acquainted with the Celtic breed, I think he would have made the very same remark on the dogs; “whatever hares the dogs do not catch at speed, they fail of catching in contradiction of their shape, or from some accidental circumstance.” For assuredly when greyhounds are in good condition, and of high courage, no 72hare can escape them; unless the country present some obstacles, either a covert to conceal her, or a hollow deep pit to break off the course, or a ditch to favour her escape while out of sight of the dogs.

To this ignorance, in my opinion, is to be attributed the length of his instructions on driving the hare into nets,⁠[46] and if she pass them,⁠[47] pursuing and recovering her by scent, till she be taken, at last, completely tired out. But he has no where said either that fleet dogs altogether supersede the necessity of a sportsman having nets,⁠[48] or of his hunting by scent after the hare has escaped them. Indeed he has described only the mode of hunting which is practised by the Carians and Cretans.⁠[49]

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But such of the Celts as hunt for the beauty of the sport, and not as a means of livelihood, never make use of nets. And yet they have a variety of dog not less clever at hunting on scent than the Carian and Cretan,⁠[50] but in shape sorry brutes.⁠[51] In pursuit these give tongue with a clanging howl like the yelping Carians, but are more eager, when they catch the scent.⁠[52] Sometimes, indeed, they gladden so outrageously, even on a stale trail, that I have rated them for their excessive barking,—alikeTheir Qualities. on every scent, whether it be of the hare going to form, or at speed.⁠[53] In pursuing and recovering her, when 74started, they are not inferior to the Carians or Cretans, save in the one point of speed.

It is good sport, if they kill but a single hare in the winter season, so much resting-time do they give her in the chase; unless, indeed, by being frightened out of her wits at the tumultuous uproar of the pack, she become an easy prey.

These dogs are called Segusians,⁠[54] deriving their name from a Celtic people, amongst whom, I suppose, they were first bred, and held in repute. But⁠[55] all that can be said about them has been anticipated by the elder Xenophon. For they manifest nothing different from others in their mode of finding, or hunting their game;—having no peculiarity, unless one were inclined to speak of their shape,Shape, &c. which I scarce think worth while, except merely to say, that they are shaggy and ugly; and such as are most high-bred are most unsightly. So that the comparison of them to mendicants on the highways is popular with the Celts. For their voice is dolorous and pitiful; and they do not bark on scent of their game, as if eager and savage, but as if plaintively whining after it.

About these, then, I do not think any thing memorable can be written. But the swift-footed Celtic hounds are called in the Celtic tongue Vertragi.οὐέρτραγοι;⁠[56]—not deriving their name from any particular nation, like the Cretan, Carian, or Spartan dogs: 75but, as some of the Cretans are named διάπονοι⁠[57] from working hard, ἰταμαὶ⁠[58] from their keenness, and mongrels from their being compounded of both; so these Celts are named from their swiftness. Their Beauty.In figure, the most high-bred are a prodigy of beauty;⁠[59]—their eyes, their hair, their colour, and bodily shape throughout. Such brilliancy of gloss is there about the spottiness of the parti-coloured, and in those of uniform colour such glistening over the sameness of tint, as to afford a most delightful spectacle to an amateur of coursing.

Chap. IV.⁠[60] I will specify the indications of speed and good breeding in greyhounds,⁠[61]Marks of Speed and good Blood. and by attention to what points ill-bred and slow ones may be distinguished from them.

In the first place, let them be lengthy from head to tail;⁠[62] 76for in every variety of dog, you will find, on reflection, no one point so indicative of speed and good breeding as length; and on the other hand, no such mark of slowness and degeneracy as shortness. So that I have even seen dogs with numerous other faults, that have been, on account of their length, both swift and high-couraged. And farther, the larger dogs,⁠[63] when in other respects equal, show higher breeding than small ones on the very score of size. But those large dogs are bad, whose limbs are unknit, and destitute of symmetry;⁠[64] being indeed, when so formed, worse than small dogs, with an equal share of other faults attached to them.

Your greyhounds should have light and well-articulated heads;⁠[65] whether hooked⁠[66] or flat nosed is not of much consequence:77 nor does it greatly matter whether the parts beneath the forehead be protuberant with muscle.⁠[67] They are alone bad which are heavy-headed, having thick nostrils, with a blunt instead of a pointed termination. Such then are well-headed hounds. Their eyes should be large, up-raised, clear, strikingly bright. The best look fiery, and flash like lightning, resembling those of leopards, lions, or lynxes.⁠[68] Next to these 78are black eyes, provided they are wide-open and grim-looking; and last of all, grey:⁠[69] nor are these to be considered bad, nor indicative of bad dogs, provided they are clear, and have a savage look.

Chap. V.For I have myself bred up a hound whose eyes are the greyest of the grey;⁠[70] a swift,Episode on Arrian’s dog Hormé. hard-working, courageous, sound-footed dog, and, in his prime, a match, at any time, for four hares. He⁠[71] is, moreover, (for while I am writing, he is 79yet alive), most gentle, and kindly-affectioned;⁠[72] and never before had any dog such regard for myself, and friend and fellow-sportsman, Megillus.⁠[73] For when not actually engaged in coursing, he is never away from one or other of us. But while I am at home he remains within, by my side, accompanies me on going abroad,⁠[74] follows me to the gymnasium, 80and, while I am taking exercise, sits down by me. On my return he runs before me, often looking back to see whether I had turned any where out of the road;⁠[75] and as soon as he catches sight of me, showing symptoms of joy, and again trotting on before me. If I am going out on any government business, he remains with my friend, and does exactly the same towards him. He is the constant companion of whichever may be sick;⁠[76] and if he has not seen either of us for only a short time, he jumps up repeatedly by way of salutation, and barks with joy, as a greeting to us. At meals he pats us first with one foot and then with the other,⁠[77] to put us in mind that he is to have his share of food.⁠[78] He has also 81many tones of speech⁠[79]—more than I ever knew in any other dog—pointing out, in his own language, whatever he wants.

Having been beaten, when a puppy, with a whip, if any one, even at this day, does but mention a whip, he will come up to the speaker cowering and begging,⁠[80] applying his mouth 82to the man’s as if to kiss him, and jumping up, will hang on his neck, and not let him go until he has appeased his angry threats.⁠[81]

Now really I do not think that I should be ashamed to write even the name of this dog; that it may be left to posterity, that Xenophon the Athenian had a greyhound called Hormé, of the greatest speed and intelligence,⁠[82] and altogether supremely excellent.⁠[83]

Let the ears of your greyhounds be large and soft,⁠[84] so as to appear, from their size and softness, as if broken. Such are best: but it is no bad indication if they appear erect, provided they are not small and stiff.⁠[85] The neck should be long, 83round, and flexible;⁠[86] so that if you forcibly draw the dogs backwards by their collars, it may seem to be broken, from its flexibility and softness. Broad chests are better than narrow. Let them have shoulders standing wide-apart,⁠[87] not tied together,84 but as loose, and free from each other, as possible—legs round, straight, and well-jointed—sides strong—loins broad, firm, not fleshy, but sinewy—upper flanks loose and supple⁠[88]—hips wide asunder—lower flanks hollow—tails fine, long, rough with hair, supple, flexible, and more hairy towards the tip—haunches85 sweeping, and firm to the touch:⁠[89]—with regard to their legs, if the hind ones are longer than the fore, the greyhound will run best up hill; if the fore legs are longest, down hill; but if both are equal, he will run best on a flat.⁠[90] Since, however, it is more difficult to beat a hare on an acclivity, because she runs best up hill, those are deemed the better class of dogs, whose hind legs are longer than their fore ones.⁠[91] Round and strong feet are decidedly best.⁠[92]

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Chap. VI.The colour of greyhounds is not of any importance;⁠[93] nor does it matterColour of no importance. if they are perfectly black, red, or white; nor87 is a simple, uniform colour to be suspected as ferine. The colours, such as they are, should be bright and pure; and the hair, whether the dog be of the rough or smooth sort, should88 be fine, close, and soft.⁠[94] The best dogs are such as are large and well put together, and resemble bitches in point of suppleness; and the best bitches are such as resemble dogs in spirit, and muscularity of body.⁠[95]

Now if any one pays attention to these hints, as to the shape of greyhounds, they will fully supply him, in my opinion, with the indications of good blood for his kennel, and the opposite of the reverse.

Chap. VII.Nor will the temperIndications from Temper. of greyhounds afford fewer indications of good and bad blood to a careful observer.⁠[96] Such hounds, in the first place, as are crabbed to all persons alike, are not of a generous breed. But if you find any cross to strangers, and 89good-tempered to their feeder, it is rather a favourable sign than otherwise.⁠[97]

I once knew a greyhound, who was dull and sullen at home, and took no pleasure in any of the persons about him; but, when led out hunting, was beyond measure delighted, and showed, by smiling and fawning at every body that came near him, that he was vexed at staying at home. This may be held a good sign.

The best dogs, however, are those of most attachment to man, and to whom no human countenance is strange.⁠[98] Such, on the other hand, as are afraid of people, and astounded at noise,⁠[99] obstreperous, and often excited without cause, are senseless brutes of no pluck. Like men that are timid and frightened out of their wits, such dogs as these can never be deemed of generous blood.From obedience in the field. Those, too, are bad, which, when let loose from couples in a field, do not come back at the call of their keeper, but gallop away.⁠[100] If you call them in90 mildly, they pay no attention to you;—if threateningly, they keep aloof from fear.

For when a greyhound has had his gallop, and has run about, he ought to come back to his keeper, even without a call,⁠[101]—showing that he is under command at will; but, if the keeper does not choose to take him up, let him again bound away, and again return. Such dogs are well broken in as, at the voice of their keeper, crouch before him;⁠[102] not from fear, but regard and respect for their feeder, cowering like the worshippers⁠[103] of the Great King.⁠[104] It is no good sign for a hound to stand still, when let out of couples on an open91 plain, unless he happen to be advanced in age,⁠[105] for it shows sluggishness.

The most high-bred greyhounds have a prominent brow, and look proud.⁠[106] Their tread is light, quick-stepping, on their toes; and they walk sideways,⁠[107] extending their necks like horses curvetting.⁠[108]

92

Chap. VIII.Some greyhounds eat voraciously, others with delicacy.⁠[109] The latter From their mode of feeding.mode of feeding indicates a dog of better blood than the former.⁠[110] Good dogs are not bad feeders, but fond of bread or gruel.⁠[111] This kind of farinaceous food is most strengthening to them, and there is no fear of their gorging themselves too much with it. I prefer, however, their liking food quite dry;⁠[112] and yet, if it be moistened with water, and they still relish it, it is no evil.

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When a dog is sick, administer the broth of fat meat to him, or having roasted a bullock’s liver over some hot coals, and rubbed it abroad, sprinkle it like flour into the broth.⁠[113] This is good also for puppies to strengthen their limbs, when they are first weaned from milk.⁠[114] But milk is the best food for the support of puppies till the ninth month, and even longer; and is serviceable to the sick and delicate, both as drink and aliment. Fasting too is beneficial to a sick dog.⁠[115]

Chap. IX.There is nothing like a soft and warm bed for greyhounds; but it is best for them to sleep withManagement of the Kennel. men:—as they become 94thereby affectionately attached—pleased with the Bedding.contact of the human body, and as fond of their bedfellow as of their feeder.⁠[116] If any ailing affect the dog, the man will perceive it, and will relieve him in the night, when thirsty, or urged by any call of nature. He will also know how the dog has rested. For if 95he has passed a sleepless night,⁠[117] or groaned frequently in his sleep,⁠[118] or thrown up any of his food,⁠[119] it will not be safe to take him out coursing. All these things the dog’s bedfellow will be acquainted with.

Nothing can be worse than for dogs to sleep with each other; and more especially so, if they touch one another in bed. For as all cutaneous irritation is removed by a man sleeping with them, so, when they sleep together, they generate every sort of foulness of skin by warmth and close contact, and are generally full of mange.⁠[120] To which cause 96must be referred the very offensive and pungent stench on entering a kennel where many hounds are confined together.

Chap. X.Rubbing the whole bodyRubbing down. is of great service to the greyhound;⁠[121] no less than to the horse.⁠[122] For it is conducive to the firmness and strength of his limbs—renders his hair soft, and skin shining,⁠[123] and cleanses it from all foulness.

97

The back and loins you should rub with your right hand, placing your left under the belly; lest the dog, being forcibly pressed down upon his knees, should suffer injury. The sides should be rubbed with both hands at once, and the haunches quite down to the feet, and the shoulders in the same way. When the dog seems to have had enough of it, lay hold of his tail, and lift him up by it; and then having drawn it through your hand, let him go. As soon as he is at liberty, he will shake himself, and show that he is pleased with the operation.

Chap. XI.It is a point of equal importance with any other, that greyhounds be Kennelling.confined during the day;⁠[124] otherwise they will 98unavoidably become intractable, and, whenever fastened with a collar, will be impatient under the restraint, and whine, and 99gnaw the straps, so as even to require chains like malefactors. Besides, a hound that is at liberty must needs eat every thing that falls in his way;⁠[125] and, from running about during the day-time, lose the acme of his speed. But, though generally at rest, they should still have their appointed times for walking out.

Chap. XII.Four times a day, at least, take your dogs out of kennel to a level and open field,Exercising. and there loose them from couples, to empty themselves, gallop, and run about.⁠[126] But if they have 100quite ceased coursing, let it be done more frequently. Slip them in pairs, a brace at a time, so that by contending and playing with each other, they may enjoy their pleasure, and take their exercise together. But on no account let many loose at once, as they sometimes do great mischief by falling on each other.⁠[127] Never slip a strong and full-grown dog with a puppy; for the old dog is an overpowering and distressing antagonist for the youngster, easily overtaking him in pursuit, and as readily running away from him, and leaving him behind; whereby the pup must of course be cowed and dispirited, having in either case the worst of the contest. And farther, such as are spiteful towards each other, never give these their liberty at one and the same time, lest they injure one another. For there are dogs, as well as men, with mutual antipathies, and others again with mutual attachments.⁠[128] Those of the same sex are particularly inimical to each other, dogs to dogs, and bitches to bitches; and this 101generally from spiteful jealousy. These matters are not to be made light of.

Chap. XIII.In the winter season feed your dogs only once a day,⁠[129] a little before evening;Feeding in winter and summer. for the days are short, and the greyhounds are to be so managed, that if you need their services for coursing till a late hour, they may be able to bear the necessary fasting. But in summer it is right to give them a little bread in addition,⁠[130] that they may not be exhausted by the length of the day; and if thirsty, they will drink with less detriment after having eaten. To thrust down a dog’s throat a piece of salted suet is also found beneficial.⁠[131] But if 102the weather be very hot, I would have you take an egg in your hand, open your dog’s mouth, and push it down, that he may swallow it at one gulp. This will be nourishment enough for him, will cherish his wind, and quench his thirst.⁠[132]

Chap. XIV.
Seasons of Coursing.You may go out coursing frequently in spring and autumn,⁠[133] these seasons being attended with the least risk to your dogs—but103 rarely in summer,⁠[134] lying by, generally,⁠[135] when the heat is oppressive. For greyhounds are impatient of heat, and often, when pursuing a hare with all their might, have been suffocated from a stoppage of their wind.⁠[136] To guard against which, a courser should carry eggs with him, and administer them entire, if his hound’s breathing be exceedingly distressed. For there is no better refrigerative, nothing that appeases difficulty of breathing so much. It is not unattended with danger for a dog, under these circumstances of distress, to drink immoderately.

For the reasons given, then, be cautious of coursing in hot weather. Never go out in winter when the cold is severe, and, on no account, when the ground is frozen hard. For dogs 104bruise themselves in frost,⁠[137] lose their nails,⁠[138] lacerate the soles of their feet, and if very high-couraged, break even the bones of their toes against the frozen ground from running with excessive eagerness. Whereas the hare is light, with woolly and soft feet,⁠[139] and trips along without injury in frost.

105

Chap. XV.⁠[140]
Slipping law. Whoever courses with greyhounds⁠[141] should neither slip them near the hare, nor more than a brace at a time;⁠[142] for though the hare be remarkably swift-footed, and have often beaten many dogs, yet being just started from her form, she cannot but be fluttered at heart, and terrified at the hallooing, and the hounds pressing close upon her:—and in this way, many a noble hare has often ignobly perished without an effort, showing no diversion worth mentioning.

Let the hare, therefore, creep away from her form as if unperceived, and recover her presence of mind. And then, if she be a racer,⁠[143] she will prick up her ears, and bound away 106from her seat with long strides; and the greyhounds, having capered about as if they were dancing,⁠[144] will stretch out at full speed after her. And at this time is the spectacle worthy indeed of the pains that must necessarily be bestowed on these dogs.⁠[145]

107

Chap. XVI.
Hares. Those are the strongest hares which have their forms in open and exposed places;⁠[146] for, from boldness, they do not 108conceal themselves, but seem to me to challenge the dogs. When coursed, they do not fly to the woods or groves, however near, for immediate liberation from danger, but stretch away to the open country;⁠[147] and during the contest, if they are pursued by slow hounds, they moderate their own speed according as they are pressed; but if their pursuers are fast, they run with all their might.⁠[148]

Often when they have turned aside to the champaign country, if they perceive a fleet dog following so close as to overshadow them, they throw him off by frequent ricks and turns, and again make for the woods, or wherever they know of a place of refuge; and this should be deemed a proof that the dog has beaten the hare. For coursers, such at least as are true sportsmen, do not take their dogs out for the sake of catching a hare, but for the contest and sport of coursing;⁠[149] 109and are glad if the hare meet with an escape: if she fly to any thin brake for concealment, though they may see her trembling and in the utmost distress, they will call off their dogs,⁠[150] and more particularly so, when they have run well.⁠[151]

Often, indeed, when following a course on horseback, have I come up to the hare as soon as caught, and myself saved her alive: and then, having taken away my dog, and fastened him up, allowed her to escape.⁠[152] And if I have arrived too late to save her, I have struck my head with sorrow, that the dogs had killed so good an antagonist.⁠[153]

110

On this point alone I cannot agree with my namesake. I allow indeed that a man may forget every other object of which he is enamoured, when he sees a hare found, and pursued at speed;⁠[154] but to see her taken is, I own, neither a pleasant nor striking spectacle; but disagreeable rather, and not at all likely to make us forgetful of other objects of attachment.⁠[155] And yet we must not blame Xenophon, considering 111he was ignorant of greyhounds, if even the capture of a hare appeared to him a grand sight.

I am aware, (even if my instructions were opposed to it), how strong the inducement is to halloo, when following a course, and that even a dumb man might break forth, as is related of the son of Crœsus.⁠[156]

Chap. XVII.
Cheering greyhounds. It is proper sometimes to speak to the greyhounds; for they are pleased at hearing their master’s voice,⁠[157] and have the 112consciousness of his presence, and of their brilliant running not escaping his notice, as an encouragement and reward for their exertions.

There is no objection to your cheering your hound as often as you like in his first course; but in his second or third, when it is probable that he is fagged, I think it wrong to cheer him very often by name, lest from his ardour, and desire of pleasing his master, he exert himself beyond his strength, and suffer some inward rupture; an accident which has been fatal to many a high-bred greyhound. But he should be allowed to slacken his running as he chooses. For the contest is by no means equal between the hare and greyhound:⁠[158] the hare runs 113where she likes, and the dog pursues; she shifts her course,⁠[159] throws him off, and darts forward; and if thrown out, the dog is wide of the hare, and must again stretch away after her a-head, and recover what he has lost of the course by overshooting himself.⁠[160]

114

Moreover, the natural difficulties of the country are more in favour of the hare, than the dog—such as rough and stony 115grounds,⁠[161] steeps and inequalities of surface—both because she is light, and because her feet, from their woolliness, are not liable to be lacerated by the roughness of the ground;⁠[162] and 116the running for her life, too, takes away all sense of difficulties.

Chap. XVIII.
Praising, &c. When the greyhound has caught the hare, or been otherwise victorious in the course,⁠[163] you should dismount from your horse, pat him with your hand and praise him, kissing his head, and stroking his ears, and speaking to him by name—“Well done, Cirras!”⁠[164]—“Well done, Bonnas!”⁠[165]—“Bravo, my Hormé!”⁠[166]—calling each hound by his name; for, like men of generous spirit, they love to be praised:⁠[167] and the dog, if not quite tired out, will come up with joy to caress you. At this time, it is a good sign for him to roll himself on the ground, as we see horses do;⁠[168] for it shows that he is not done up with the course, and, at the same time, rolling refreshes him.

117

Chap. XIX.⁠[169]
Celtic mode of coursing with hare-finders. The more opulent Celts,⁠[170] who live in luxury, course in the following manner. They send out hare-finders⁠[171] early in the morning to look over such places as are likely to afford hares in form;⁠[172] and a messenger brings word if they have found any, and what number. They then go out themselves, and having started the hare, slip the dogs after her, and follow on horseback.⁠[173]

Chap. XX.
Without hare-finders. But others, who have no hare-finders, go out on horseback, collecting a large party of fellow-sportsmen together; and coming to likely lying-ground, when a hare is started, they slip their dogs. While others again, who are more of workmen at the sport, sally forth on foot;⁠[174] and if any one 118accompanies them on horseback, it is his duty to keep up with the dogs.

They beat the ground in regular array, with an extended front, proceeding in a straight line to the completion of a certain extent of country; and then, wheeling about in a body, return in the same way by the side of their former track, omitting as far as possible none of the likely lying.⁠[175]

But it is necessary, if many dogs are taken into the field, that they should not be left at random, and without arrangement. For when the hare is started from her form, not a man would refrain from slipping his hound after her: one from eagerness to see his own dog run, and another from being startled and beside himself at the hallooing; and the hare would be caught, in consequence of the crowd and confusion of the dogs, without a struggle, and the whole value of the 119spectacle destroyed. Steward.On which account a steward should be appointed over the sport,⁠[176] should match the dogs, and give orders to the field:—if the hare start on this side, you and you are to slip, and nobody else; but if on that side, you and you: and let strict attention be paid to the orders given.⁠[177]

120

Chap. XXI.
Coursing with sagacious and swift hounds together. The Celts sometimes course with a mixture of sagacious and swift-footed hounds;⁠[178] and while the dogs of scent are trying, 121they stand apart with the greyhounds, leading them in their hands where it is most probable the hare will direct her course, that they may slip them at her when she breaks cover.⁠[179] And here the greyhounds answer the same purpose as Xenophon’s nets.⁠[180] But the courses in this way are irregular and confused, and the hare, however good, is generally so terrified at the barking of the finders, that, unless she get far enough a-head to be able to recover herself, she is easily caught, being frightened out of her wits.⁠[181]

122

Whoever, therefore, is a good slipper, should not let go his dog while the hare is at all bewildered, (unless he would destroy the sport,) but should allow her to make her first turns, and then slip.

Chap. XXII.
Ware Leveret. Let it be deemed unlawful to slip to a young hare;⁠[182] but rather, in obedience to my namesake, spare such for the Goddess.⁠[183] If possible, indeed, you should endeavour to call off 123the dogs on scent; though they are with difficulty checked, being intractable from hunger, and so keen at devouring whatever prey they take, that you can scarce drive them away, even by beating them with sticks.

Chap. XXIII.
Stag-coursing. You should course the stag, or any game of equal size in the same way, slipping high-couraged hounds;⁠[184] for the animal is 124large, runs a long while, and is by no means safe to contend with;⁠[185] indeed there is no little danger of a greyhound being destroyed by a stag.⁠[186]

But where the plains are adapted for riding, as in Mysia, Dacia, Scythia, and Illyricum,⁠[187] they are in the habit of 125coursing deer with Scythian and Illyrian horses; which, though slow at first in pursuit, and utterly despicable, as far as appearance goes, by the side of those of Thessaly, Sicily, or Peloponnesus, hold out to the last under the most severe work.⁠[188] On such occasions you will see the huge, swift, proud-looking horse flagging, and this lean and scrubby little animal at first passing him, then leaving him behind, and at last even driving the stag away from him. He holds on indeed until the stag gives out and stops, gasping with distress;⁠[189] when you may, if 126you choose, spear him at close quarters as if enfettered,⁠[190] or throw a noose over his neck,⁠[191] and lead him away alive.

Chap. XXIV.
African Coursing of Wild Asses.In Africa there is a mode of coursing on Libyan horses,⁠[192] called Nomades, on which the sportsmen, mounted, catch not only red and roe deer,⁠[193] (for these are taken with little effort, and the horses are not esteemed good in consequence,⁠[194]) but also 127wild asses,⁠[195] which excel in speed, and power of holding out for the greatest length of course.

For when the Greeks marched with Cyrus, the son of Darius, against the great king,⁠[196] (in which expedition Xenophon was engaged, who relates the circumstance,⁠[197]) while they were passing over the plains of Arabia,⁠[198] there appeared herds of wild asses, but not one could be caught by any single horseman, and therefore the Greeks pursued them with relays of horsemen at stated distances; and after the asses had held out for a long while against several, they sunk at last from fatigue. Thus even Cyrus himself, the son of the great king, and the brother of the great king, had not horses good enough 128for this chase; and yet the Libyan boys, some at eight years of age, and others not much older, mounted on their naked steeds,⁠[199] and guiding them with a switch, as the Greeks employ 129the rein, press these wild asses so closely in pursuit, that at last they throw a noose around their necks and lead them away quite subdued.⁠[200]

Such are the methods of coursing adopted by those who have fleet hounds and horses: they neither ensnare the animals with toils, nets, or springes;⁠[201] nor employ, in short, any other tricks or wily inventions, but contend with them in a straight-forward trial of speed.⁠[202] And to me, the two spectacles appear nowise 130akin: the former being like thievish depredation; the latter, like a battle fought out with main strength: the one class of sportsmen resembling pirates in their clandestine attack, while the other are as openly victorious as were the Athenians over the Medes in the naval engagement at Artemisium,⁠[203] or at Salamis and Psyttalia, or again at Cyprus.

Chap. XXV.
Age and mode of entering bitch-puppies. As to the age at which greyhounds should begin coursing,⁠[204] you may take a bitch out after the eleventh month;⁠[205] or, if she 131be well set, and not loose-limbed, you may let go a hare from your hand before her, in an open field, a month earlier than this, starting the pup close to the hare, that she may enjoy the sight of her game, and, by seeing it quite close, may work with eagerness.⁠[206] But presently slip another good dog to the hare, that the puppy may not suffer by too long a course, nor flag from over-fatigue; and the second dog turning the hare with ease again and again, will drive her into the puppy’s mouth, when the latter should be allowed to tear her with her teeth till she has killed her.⁠[207]

132

As soon as the season arrives for taking out your puppies, let them be first walked over such roads as are rough;⁠[208] 133for this exercise is conducive to forming and strengthening their feet. Then station the man who leads them upon a conspicuous and elevated spot, and be sure that he does not slip a puppy when the hare has got much a-head, and is out of sight; (notwithstanding the elder Xenophon advises it in regard to dogs that are to be practised at running on scent;⁠[209]) for if you slip a greyhound puppy out of sight of her game, she runs wide, and jumps about, and is beside herself and bewildered. And after she is full-grown, if a hare happen to escape her, she is never at rest, neither returning to her keeper, nor obeying his call, but, from eagerness for a course, continuing to run about wildly, like a mad dog, after nothing.⁠[210]

Let the man, then, that holds the puppy stand on such a spot as I have stated,⁠[211] concealed from view at the point where it is most probable the tired hare⁠[212] will come in the course of her 134turns; and when he sees her quite weary, let him slip the puppy close to her, neither before, nor directly opposite to her; for the bitch rushing right upon her will overshoot herself, and the hare, with a wrench, easily skimming by, will of course leave the bitch far behind; the latter with difficulty turning herself, as gallies sailing briskly a-head cannot readily tack, unless the rowing be much slackened before they are brought about. Let the hare, therefore, just pass by, and then let him slip obliquely after her. Some one should follow up quickly, as soon as the hare is caught, before the dogs are gorged with her blood. Not that the flesh of a hare is to be accounted of much worth by a person who courses for the beauty of the sport;⁠[213] but it is a bad thing to teach a greyhound to eat a hare.⁠[214] 135Many a dog, too, has been Ware dead.destroyed by gorging himself while out of breath, after a long course, and has died of suffocation.

Chap. XXVI.
Age of entering dog-puppies.Dog-puppies must not be taken out coursing until they are two years old,⁠[215] for their limbs become set at a much later period than those of bitches. Besides it is attended with no little danger to take them out earlier, many a greyhound having been prematurely destroyed by a severe course before he was full-grown, and especially those of the greatest spirit and highest breeding; for, in consequence of their spirit, they run to the very utmost of their power.

The other practical points, already insisted on in reference to bitches, are equally to be attended to in regard to the other sex. DogsAge of sexual intercourse. are to be kept from copulation within the age stated; for the seed being not yet matured in them, is generally weak and evanid, καθάπερ ἡ τῶν παίδων.⁠[216] The puppies themselves136 too are so utterly ruined by it that you can never afterwards, do what you will, remedy the error. The proper and seasonable time for sexual intercourse is from the completion of the third year.⁠[217]

137

Chap. XXVII.
Time of sexual intercourse. And it should be thus managed:—watch the opportunity of 138the bitch being clear of vaginal blood; for if she receive the seed before, it generally is not retained, but is washed out 139by the blood,⁠[218] καθάπερ ταῖς γυναιξί; and you must here pay her particular attention, as it is only for a short interval of time 140that she preserves her heat after the vaginal blood has stopped.

A bitch’s age may be considered good for the purpose from the second to the seventh year.⁠[219]

Chap. XXVIII.
Mode of sexual intercourse. It is best for the dog and bitch to be shut up by themselves, and to be out of sight while together.⁠[220] For open and public copulations, if we may believe sportsmen, are not prolific;⁠[221] 141but such as are effected by dogs in private are reported to succeed.⁠[222]

Bitches, after being warded, may be led out, as walking about is conducive to their strength;⁠[223] but they must not be 142slipped again to a hare, for fear of being destroyed by overstraining or excessive fatigue. The dog likewise should not be let loose after a hare until he is recovered from his exhaustion, and invigorated by an interval of at least sixty days’ rest. After which there will be no obstacle to his being coursed.⁠[224]

Chap. XXIX.
Breeding season.The most favourable season for breeding is the spring of the year,⁠[225] as the temperature is mediate between hot and cold. 143Winter is not propitious for rearing puppies, more especially on account of the want of milk:⁠[226] and summer is distressing to the dams for suckling. Autumn is worse than spring for this reason, that the winter arrests the whelps before they are thoroughly formed.⁠[227]

144

Chap. XXX.
Management after whelping. If you wish a brood-bitch to recover her previous speed,⁠[228] you must not let her suckle her whelps,⁠[229] except merely to 145lighten any excess of milk,—and then put them to other bitches, selecting such as are well-bred: for the milk of 146degenerate curs is not congenial to high-bred puppies.⁠[230] If, however, the dam herself appear no longer serviceable for 147coursing, it is best to leave the whelps with their own mother, and not to put them under a foster-parent.⁠[231] For the growth is 148stinted by a stranger’s nursing, (as the other Xenophon declares,) but the mother’s milk and breath are cherishing to her puppies.

Chap. XXXI.
Food of weaned puppies. When puppies can run about, Xenophon properly recommends that they be fed with milk;⁠[232] for the filling them with 149heavy food distorts their legs, and occasions diseases in their bodies. And as to giving dogs short names of easy pronunciation,⁠150[233] in this we should also attend to him;Xenophon’s instructions approved. for the names which he has enumerated, (in part the invention of others, and some of his own creation), are cleverly composed.

But if you do not as yet wish your bitches to breed up any puppies, you must take the greatest possible care of them while under distress in consequence.⁠[234] For when they have 151ceased to give suck, their teats become turgid and full of milk, and the parts beneath the belly distended . At which time, it is not safe to loose them after a hare,—for their flanks may be burst asunder: nor should you let them play with another dog, as, by contending and striving with him beyond their strength, they may be placed in equal danger.

It is best to wait till their teats are become flaccid. And you will have a proof that it is safe to take them out, when the hair falls off abundantly, as you stroke it with your hand. They are then, I think, free from the distress they laboured under on account of their milk, and are ready for coursing.⁠[235]

Chap. XXXII.
Estimate of Sexes. The greyhound bitch is fleeter than the dog,⁠[236] but the dog 152has more bottom than the bitch;⁠[237] and, because he can run through the whole year, is a much more valuable acquisition: and as good bitches abound, but it is no easy thing to meet with a thorough-good dog, the latter is on this account more precious: and again, it is fortunate if bitches preserve their speed to the fifth year,⁠[238] whereas dogs retain theirs even to the tenth.⁠[239] For all which reasons, in my opinion, a really good, high-bred dog is a great treasure⁠[240]—one that falls not to the lot of a courser without the favour of some god.⁠[241] For such a blessing, then, he should sacrifice to Diana Venatrix.⁠[242] He 155should sacrifice, too, whenever successful in his sport, dedicate 156the first-fruits of his spoils to the goddess,⁠[243] and purify his dogs and sportsmen,⁠[244] as regulated by the established rites of the country.

Chap. XXXIII.
Celtic hunting rites. Some of the Celts have a custom of annually sacrificing to Diana;⁠[245] while others institute a treasury for the goddess,⁠[246]—into157 which they pay two oboli for every hare that is caught,⁠[247]—a drachma for a fox,⁠[248] (because he is a crafty animal, and 158destroys hares,)—and four drachmæ for a roe-deer,⁠[249] in consideration of his size, and greater value as game.

When the year comes round, on the return of the nativity of Diana,⁠[250] the treasury is opened, and a victim purchased out of the money collected;⁠[251] either a sheep, or kid,⁠[252] or heifer, 159according to the amount of the sum: and then, after having sacrificed, and presented the first-offerings of their victims to the Goddess of the chase,⁠[253] according to their respective rites, they give themselves up, with their hounds, to indulgence and recreation,⁠[254]—crowning the latter on this day with garlands,⁠[255] 160as an indication of the festival being celebrated on their account.⁠[256]

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Chap. XXXIV.
Injunctions to the observance of religious rites. This Celtic custom I follow with my fellow-sportsmen,⁠[257] and declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue 162without the interposition of the Gods.⁠[258] For that Mariners, 163who regard their safety, supplicate the Gods at embarkation;⁠[259] and, after dangers escaped, offer up sacrifices of gratitude to the sea-deities, Neptune, Amphitrite, and the Nereids.⁠[260] Cultivators of the soil do the same to Ceres, her daughter, and Bacchus;⁠[261] Artificers, to Minerva and Vulcan;⁠[262] Professors of instruction,⁠[263] to the Muses,⁠[264] Apollo Musagetes,⁠[265] Mnemosyne,⁠[266] and Mercury;⁠[267] Lovers, to Venus,⁠[268] Cupid,⁠[269] Suada,⁠[270] and the Graces.⁠[271] And, upon the same principle, Sportsmen should not be neglectful of Diana Venatrix,⁠[272] nor Apollo,⁠[273] nor Pan,⁠[274] nor the Nymphs,⁠[275] nor Mercury,⁠[276] the conductor and president of the highways, nor any other mountain gods⁠[277] that there may be: otherwise their pursuits must turn out abortive, their dogs injured, their horses lamed,⁠[278] and themselves disappointed.⁠[279]

[Pg 171]

Chap. XXXV.
Enforced by examples from Homer. And of this, Homer gives evidence in his poem.⁠[280] Teucer, he says, the best bowman of the Greeks, in the archery-contest 172hit the cord only, and cut it asunder, because he had offered no vow toIliad. L. xxiii. 852. seqq. Apollo;⁠[281] but that Merion, who was no archer at all, by having invoked Apollo, struck the bird when on the wing.

Again, the posterity of those, who fought against Thebes with Polynices, captured the city,⁠[282]

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whereas their fathers, not at all inferior to them in valour, had perished before it, because they were disobedient to the signs vouchsafed to them by the Gods.

And lastly, Hector, inattentive to Polydamas when he objected to an attack on the Grecian fleet,⁠[283] (because the Trojans would not return from it with honour to themselves, as he inferred from a serpent dropped by an eagle,) was soon afterwards taught otherwise by experience, that no good comes of being refractory towards the Deity.⁠[284]

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Following these examples, it is right in field-sports, as in every thing else, to begin with adoration of the Gods;⁠[285] and, after having obtained success, to offer thanksgiving-sacrifices⁠[286] and libations,⁠[287] with auspicious words,⁠[288] and crowns,⁠[289] and hymns,⁠[290] and to dedicate the first-fruits of the captured game,⁠[291] as the conqueror does of the spoils of war.⁠[292]

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APPENDIX.

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In introducing to the reader’s notice the Canes Venatici of the following monograph—wherein the embellishment of fable is often admitted as the language of truth, and amusement is paramount to instruction—it must not be expected that I should carry back the history of the chase to the early period of the world’s annals, when

and man’s subject creatures revolted from their revolted lord—

the probable date of its institution—(“cum peccato enim animalium noxa simul et persecutio et fuga subintravit, et artes venationum excogitatæ sunt,”)—nor to the later epoch of its Phenician origin, maintained by Polydore Vergil on the authority of Eusebius; nor its more fabulous Theban birth and distribution, the thrice-told tale of John of Salisbury:⁠[293] but rather consider hunting as an art of acquisition and self-defence of remote and undefined antiquity.

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On Venation, as a pastime, too much has already been said in the preface to Arrian: and I will at present confine my remarks to a few classical anecdotes of its primitive furniture, its founders, and progressional improvement; premising, by the way, that when men were unacquainted with the blessings of civilization, and had no idea of pleasure beyond the gratification of their appetites—when, in short, they were in a state of nature—hunting was not the by-work of leisure hours, but the call of continual urgency—not the jocund diversion of a day, but the toilsome and perilous occupation of a life. In such early times, the nonage of a fallen world, commenced the war of men with beasts:

The personal safety of himself and those dependent on his protection, and the daily cravings of hunger, dictated to man the necessity of animal slaughter; so that, in seeking his quotidian meal, he originated the art of hunting:

The first hostile efforts of the barbarian lords of creation against their biped and quadruped subjects, “joint-tenants of the shade” with themselves, were confined, we may suppose, to manifestations of physical strength and brute courage; by which, under the powerful incentives of self-interest, they procured the vital necessaries of food and clothing:

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And here at the head of rude pedestrian sportsmen we find the human inventor of the science of the chase, that legendary personage, the Gorgon-killing Ovid. Metam. L. iv. 699.Perseus⁠[295]—“Gorgonis anguicomæ Perseus superator”—(for I would not deprive Latona’s hunting-twins, Apollo and Diana, nor the worshipful raceXen. de Venat. c. i. of Centaurs, φῦλα θηρομιγῆ,⁠[296] of their priority of claim, and patent of precedency, in the apotheosis of the chase,) who,Oppian. Cyneg. L. ii. 5. when he had performed this redoubted act of courage, as we are told by the poet of Anazarbus:

As men in general, however, did not possess the speed of Perseus 182and Achilles,⁠[297] “To sweep with winged feet along the level plain;” nor the power of catching at force, νόσφι κυνοδρομίης, the fleetest animals of chase, like the goddess Dian; it became necessary to add to their naked powers sundry inartificial implements, auxiliary to the subjugation of some, the destruction and expulsion of other beasts.

Acquiring knowledge by experience, man advanced in the mechanism and variety of his hunting gear, as in other articles of increasing civilization.

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Finding, on patient trial, the χάος εὐρὺ περιστεφὲς of Oppian, with its rude accompaniment of fire, &c. insufficient for capturing the more wary creatures—

he had recourse to the various kinds of weapons, snares, and wily inventions of slaughter described by Xenophon, Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesian; and often alluded to by other writers, both sacred and profane:

But “short of due perfection” were all the hunter’s wiles, till the dog was tutored to assist in the sylvan pursuit and massacre, and to contribute the acuteness of his senses, his speed and courage, to the service of mankind; who consummated their superiority over the animals of the forest, when they had directed to their chase the adapted powers of this faithful ally, and begun, in the words of the cited poet of theEjusdem 140. Georgics—“magnos canibus circumdare saltus,”—redeeming thereby their esculent crops and innocuous herds from the ferocious and depredatory aggression of quadruped felons.⁠[298]

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The “venandi mille viæ” of the Carthaginian poet have been superseded in the British islands by the superior attraction of the gun:

and of various eminent breeds of fleet and sagacious dogs, adapted to the chase at force. But as these methods were heretofore employed by our less civilized ancestry,⁠[300] are still in vogue in unreclaimed countries, and many of them yet practised on the continent of Europe—whateverCertaine Illustrations, &c. p. 25. be their “incongruity to our present factions,” as Wase expresses himself—a brief description of the “supellex venandi” will not be unacceptable to the modern reader, 185by way of introduction to the subject of classic hunting with the ancient varieties of the canine race.

With seeming accuracy Gratius has described the whole of the antique poaching gear;⁠[301] but it must be confessed that neither Xenophon’s, nor the Faliscian’s, nor the hunting technicalities of the other Cynegetical writers, can be fully explained to modern comprehension.

The deities and demi-deities of sylvan life are objects of invocation in the exordium of Gratius:

and then, under their tutelary aid, the poet begins to handle the “arma venandi;” which, as recorded in the Cynegetica generally, consisted of the linea or formido, nets of various mesh and size and shape, nooses, springes, and other traps—missile weapons, as darts, arrows, &c.; and those for standing-defence, as the halberd-like boar-spear, &c.: many of these, however, were not of very remote antiquity.⁠[302]

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The feathered line or pinnatum was called, from its effect, metus, formido, and δείματα θηρῶν, (Oppian. Cyneg. iv. 389.) “Cum maximos ferarum greges,” says Seneca, “linea pennis distincta contineat, et in insidias agat; ab ipso effectu dicta formido.”

The line of feathers of various hue, impregnated with artificial odour, “was drawn about the woods Wase’s Illustrations, &c. p. 7.(——ὀλίγον γαίης ἐφύπερθεν, Oppian. Cyneg. iv. 386.) in the intermitted spaces where the toyles were pitched, that so the deer (than which no creature is more timorous) might balk them, and be cast upon the net.” The linea thus flanked the δίκτυ or long net, where not extensive enough to enclose the covert; and filled the intervals, between the purse-nets and nooses, when the latter were set independent of the retia.

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The Cilician poet has left a graphic description of the formido, as employed in the Armenian bear-hunt—a picture so vividly sketched, Cyneg. iv. 380, that I regret its length prevents transcription. A part of it will be found hereafter under the Eastern “Canis Inductor”—the Armenian limehound. The fourth Halieutic, in an apposite and beautiful simile, describes the startling effect of the feathered line on timid animals of chase:

Many notices of this instrument will occur to the classical reader 188in the works of the Latin poets, but in none more copiously delineated than in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian; who enumerates the many sources whence the feathers of dissimilar tint are to be culled for decorating the “plumed line:”

If the reader be interested in the minutiæ of Grecian and Roman net-making, and the methods of fixing the ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, and ἐνόδια, the casses, retia, and plagæ, he is referred for the former to the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and that most extraordinary work of human research, the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux—for the latter, to the Venatio Novantiqua of Janus Vlitius, a scholar of deep erudition, and an experienced sportsman:—a summary view being all that can be rendered by the present writer, professedly epitomising the labours of more experienced workmen.

The ἄρκυες or casses were conical, purse or tunnel-like nets, ending in a point at one end, and having a running noose of entrance at the other, resembling somewhat a hooped calash, or cowl.

The δίκτυα or retia were long sean-like nets for open fields, and for encircling brakes and coverts;——“longoque meantia retia tractu.”

The ἐνόδια or plagæ were nets of much less length, to be placed across roads, game-tracks, paths, and narrow openings between bushes.

The ἄρκυες appear to have been sometimes placed independent of the δίκτυα, but more commonly in the course of the main nets; so that when the animals passed along the linear and reticular barrier, exploring a place of egress, terrified by the formido, (which flanked the hayes, and occasionally was drawn along above the net-rope to scare the game from overleaping,) and the meshes of the δίκτυα, (continuous except where the purse-nets were introduced with their 189slip-knot entrance), on attempting to pass out at the apparent opening of the ἄρκυς, they became by their struggles entangled therein⁠[305]—the purse either spontaneously, or by the agency of the men placed there to draw the necessary ropes, immediately closing at the mouth.

The whole management of the nets and lines was vested in the watch αἰζηῶν πυλαωρῶν referred to, who were concealed under copse-wood, for the purpose, more particularly, of attending to the ἐπίδρομος and περίδρομος, the ropes (smooth and knotless) which governed the ἄρκυες, and passed through iron rings, along the course of the δίκτυα, up to the watchmen’s hiding-place:

The length of the δίκτυα or retia, properly so called, would astonish a modern disciple of Diana. So great was the extent of ground sometimes enclosed by these toils, that Plutarch mentions, in his life of Alexander, hunting-nets above twelve miles long. With such it was customary to encircle vast tracts of country, and then, by 190gradually contracting their ambit, to force the animals of the district into a narrower compass;—when at the will of the magister venationis, the work of slaughter commenced.⁠[306] This mode of hunting is very clearly described, with its usual auxiliaries of noise and flame, in a simile of the Achilleid:

The Faliscian poet, in the early part of his Cynegeticon, specifies the best materials for the composition of nets, with particular instructions for their size and shape:

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On the same subject the Carthaginian summarily touches, distinctly recognizing the three varieties of which we have been just speaking:

And an earlier poet, in his praise of the brumal pleasures of the countryman’s life, sunders plagæ and retia, applying them to such totally different purposes, that it is probable they sometimes differed as much in the structure of the mesh, its size, &c. as in the magnitude of the whole instrument:

Whatever honour be attached to these reticular inventions, and that of the running-noose, the βρόχος or laqueus, is due to Hippolytus:

The βρόχος generally formed a rhomb-shaped entrance to the ἄρκυς, as probably did the laqueus to the cassis:—but as the tunnel was occasionally used separate from the sean-like toil (δίκτυ—rete) and from the road-net (ἐνόδιον—plagæ), so may these slip-knot nooses have been also set independent of the purses, their usual additaments, in narrow passes, or straits frequented by game:

The noose-ropes,⁠[307] being of much ruder manufacture, and more simple 192structure, than any variety of net with meshes, must have been of earlier institution.

These laquei curraces,⁠[308] seemingly from this passage made of other materials than hemp before the days of Gratius, are yet in use, under the form of springes and wires, with deer and hare-poachers; who, I find in Hor. L. iii. Od. iv. vs. 70.Oppian, are indebted to the giant-hunter Orion—“integræ—tentator Orion Dianæ”—for the first establishment of their nocturnal depredations:

We are next introduced by Gratius to dentatæ pedicæ, spiked 193foot-traps or gins, resembling the ποδοστράβαι of Xenophon and Pollux; and formed, as the following lines indicate, of wood, concealed on the ground;

It being no small recommendation to them that one poacher might reap the fruits of another’s labours. Their invention is attributed to a virtuous and holy Arcadian, ycleped Dercylus,⁠[309] in high favour with the Sylvan goddess, and by her initiated in the mysteries of hunting, and the formation of sundry destructive implements of predation, which he first employed in the valleys of Mount Mænalus, and the Lacedæmonian Amyclæ:

And again:

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But it must not be forgotten that a competitor for the glory of these, and other like discoveries, is mentioned by Plutarch, in Amatorio, and by Nonnus, in Dionysiacis, in the person of Plutarch. in Amatorio.Aristæus—εὔχονται δ’ Ἀρισταίῳ δολοῦντες ὀρύγμασι καὶ βρόχοις λύκους καὶ ἄρκτους, ὃς πρῶτος θήρεσσιν ἔπηξε ποδάγρας:—indeed, if we may credit the Christian poet of Panopolis, the sire of the hapless Actæon is entitled to the invention of almost every article of hunting-gear, the dresses of sportsmen, initiation of hounds of chase, &c.—of many of which he has been deprived by less rightful claimants:

To the first-mentioned Arcadian worthy Gratius attributes the earliest fashioning of hunting-spears with moræ or guards. Virgil sings of “lato venabula ferro,” for close conflict; and Gratius more particularly adds, to the honour of Dercylus’s armoury, the introduction of bifid spears:

But although the Arcadian formed the spear for pedestrian assault, and Meleager was conspicuous in the use of it,—ἐν σταδίοισιν ὀρειοτέροισι μόθοισιν,—a more celebrated hero first wielded it in distant jaculation on horseback:

—a style of hunting, which we may suppose to have been much practised in the Roman empire by persons of noble rank, as Montfaucon gives several representations of it from the sepulchre of the 195Nasoni:—in exact accordance with which, the ἱππελάτης of Oppian is decked out for the equestrian chase.

The reader’s recollection will readily supply, from authors in every one’s hands, the use of bows and arrows,⁠[310] and small darts—“excussâ lancea torta manu,”—in the early annals of field-sports:

The far-famed female ally of Meleager in the attack on the Calydonian boar,

claims the merit of first employing archery; having been instructed⁠[311] both in κυνηλασίη and εὐστοχίη by Dian herself, (see Callim. H. in Dian. vs. 217.)

We are unacquainted with the form and use of many of the weapons,196 with which Oppian accoutres his able-bodied rustics for the covert-side,

and Natalis Comes, with his brief scholiast Ruscellius, throws no light on them, in the borrowed armoury of his first cynegetic. The Oppianic catalogue runs through eight lines, in which we recognize, in addition to the former implements of predatory hunting, others particularly devoted to the capture of the hare, the ἁρπάλαγον and λαγωοφόνος τρίαινα, the hare-pole, and three-pronged hare-fork—belonging probably to the class of murderous instruments mentioned by the poet of Barga:

Among the more simple modes of following wild animals for capture, I should have earlier mentioned that of tracking—from its simplicity, probably, coeval with the rudest species of pursuit. It is alluded to in the 32nd Epigram of Callimachus,

in the 1st Georgic of Virgil vs. 308. and the 2nd Satire of the 1st book of Horace vs. 105. Oppian describes tracking as twofold, by men, and dogs,—the former of course being the more ancient, and more correctly termed tracking, the latter scenting:

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Savary’s ejaculation on snow-tracking the hare is more amusing than poetical:

The many wily inventions devised by man’s ingenuity of old for ensnaring noxious and timid animals, appear to us more like instruments of lawless poaching, than fair hunting, and fully justify the conclusion of Arrian’s 24th chapter de Venatione; wherein, with the spirit of a genuine courser, he exclaims, “there is as much difference between a fair trial of speed in a good run, and ensnaring a poor animal without an effort, as between the secret piratical assaults of robbers at sea, and the victorious naval engagements of the Athenians at Artemisium, at Salamis, at Psyttalia, and at Cyprus.”

It has been erroneously stated by Montfaucon and others, that the use of nets and snares was not an exercise of pleasure to men of quality, but only to peasants, and persons of inferior grade;—the praise of a noble employment being, on this view, alone awarded to hunting with dogs, or being armed for the sport with venabula, hastilia, &c. either on foot or horseback. But this distinction, however plausible in theory, is not tenable in fact. Discreditable as the use of snares may be deemed, and irreconcilable to modern taste, the philosophic recluse of Scillus, the patrician Xenophon, and every other sportsman, whether high or low, of the classic ages, must plead guilty to their employment:

I do not mean that the gentry had not the aid of servants in these as in other menial occupations—(for it is evident that Xenophon’s ἀρκυωρὸς was a servant; and on the huntsman’s tomb, recorded by Pausanias in Achaicis c. xxii., by the side of the principal is the οἰκέτης ἀκόντια ἔχων, καὶ ἄγων κύνας ἐπιτηδείας θηρεύουσιν ἀνθρώποις—The ostentation too of the Horatian Gargilius,

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is farther proof; and so likewise the “famuli, comitumque animosa juventus” of Nemesian, engaged in preparing the furniture of hunting;⁠[313])—but I mean that the gentry were practically engaged in this predatory venation, themselves directing and assisting in the distribution of the whole machinery of it. In defence, however, of Xenophon, the most accomplished of ancient sportsmen, and in contradistinction of his habits in the field to those of modern poachers, whom in some of his predatory tackling it must be allowed he resembled, we may observe that he orders all the apparatus to be taken away when the sport isXenophon de Venat. c. v. over—ἀναλύειν χρὴ τὰ περὶ κυνηγέσιον πάντα—a clear indication, that though he and his compeers used nets and dogs together, forestalling their prey, contrary to the custom of the more enlightened moderns, who hunt at force, κατὰ πόδας,—yet it was held illegal, or at least unsportsmanlike, to leave snares on the ground longer than the time of the actual chase.⁠[314]

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But of “the abrogated styles of hunting in the ignorant non-age of the world,”—to use the language of Christopher Wase,—enough. The pit, the snare, and other supellex venandi, were employed, as already stated, long before the dog was tutored to the chase,⁠[315] and were continued after his initiation, and that of his valued associate and coadjutor the horse, (the joint-presents of the 200twin-sons of Leda,) who contributed their services in common to almost every variety of chase:

We know not at this period whether the different varieties of the canine tribe are to be classed under the same species—whether a specific identity exist in the wolf, the jackal, and the dog—nor whether, in the latter family, the peculiar adaptation of each variety for peculiar functions can be the accidental consequences of mere degeneration, excited to change by the climate of different countries, and the ingenuity of man.

Let the primeval stock be what it may, the race was first initiated in the pursuit of wild animals by that celebrated sportsman, the Amyclean Pollux;—for we must not despise fable where history is silent, and again quote the Greek poet of the chase:

The species being distributed over the habitable world, derived its various names from its geographical distribution⁠[316]—each country having its variety of the race, characterized by remarkable qualities, and distinguished by them in the Cynegetical works of Greece and Rome:—

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Where the descriptions of these mores or qualities are sufficiently full, in the works alluded to, for a satisfactory classification of the several varieties of the canine tribe, it is the object of the following trivial work to attempt it—

But it must not be expected that it will give an account of all the semi-fabulous dogs of classical antiquity, or attempt to reduce within the pale of a zoological arrangement the shape and properties of every mongrel, however memorable, that has puzzled the discriminative acumen of Conrad Gesner himself; or find archetypes in the kennels of Greece and Rome, forBen Jonson’s Sad Shepherd. Act ii. sc. 3. “all the barkand parishtikes” of the credulous Dr. Caius, and more recent writers of canine biography.

This little monograph being almost exclusively confined to the common Canes Venatici—

it is not incumbent on me to inquire whether a Cerberus, or an Orthrus, Hesiod. Theog. vs. 308.(the κρατερόφρονα τέκνα of Typhaon and Echidna⁠[317]), ever existed in canine shape—whether Anubis was a biped or quadruped “latrator”—a genuine barker, or a dog-faced Virgil. Æn. L. viii. 768. Lucian. Jupiter Tragœdus.Mercury—Ἕρμης ὁ κυνοπρόσωπος—whether Euripides was torn to pieces by ferocious dogs or spiteful women—whether the beauty of the dog of Alcibiades,202 probably a Canis OstiariusPollucis Onomast. L. v. and not a Canis Venaticus, was impaired by the loss of his tail, or the act of decurtation conferred on the eccentric Athenian the notoriety he expected—nor on what variety of the race is to be charged the deaths of In Ibin.Thrasus, Actæon,⁠[318] and Linus, of Ovid’s well-known tetrastic. It is foreign to my purpose to inquire whether Plutarch. de Solert. Animal. &c.Plutarch’s dog, who threw stones into an oil-cruse till he had raised its contents sufficiently high in the neck of the vesselPollucis Onomast. L. v. to lap the oleaginous fluid, surpassed in sagacious ingenuity the cunning brutes of more modern dog-fanciers—whether the disciplined mimic, exhibited before Vespasian in the theatre of Marcellus, must yield to the discriminative feats of his congener before Justinian. All these non-descripts, from the janitor Orci to the theatrical pantomimi, are out of my beat. Amusing too as it might be to the reader to have an account of every faithful dog, recorded by the immortal German naturalist as the σύμμαχοι and σωματοφύλακες of man,—and the anecdotes of canine instinct and affection registered by Plutarch, Ælian, Pliny, Solinus, and Julius Pollux—versified by Johannes Tzetzes and Natalis Comes, and reprinted by the laborious Paullini in the Cynographia Curiosa, presented to his notice,—such a compilation would lead me into too wide a field. For the same reason, and without meaning any disrespect to the ladies of Greece and Rome, I am prevented from enrolling on my file their domestic pets—

the οἱ ἐπὶ τερπωλὴν, καὶ οἱ μελιταῖοι λεγόμενοι of the visionary Artemidorus.⁠[319] I cannot, however, deny the reader the gratification 203of perusing the following lines of Darcius, in which he celebrates these tiny creatures;—of whom Martial. L. i. Ep. 110.Martial’s Issa will be remembered as a classic exemplar—“Deliciæ catella Publî.”

But hold—

It is a favourite notion of classic writers that the qualities and dispositions of the animals of each country are in accordance with those of the human inhabitants: and this opinion prevails more especially relative to domesticated animals, the reclaimed varieties of the dog and horse. Numerous instances might be adduced in corroboration of this hypothesis. Strabo remarks in the Iberian and Albanian people, and their dogs, the same fondness of hunting—θηρευτικοὶ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ κύνες αὐτῶν εἰς ὑπερβολήν: andÆlian. de Nat. Animal. L. iii. c. 2. Ælian, in the Medes and their horses—σοβαροὶ δὲ Μῆδοι καὶ ἁβροὶ, καὶ μέντοι καὶ οἱ ἐκείνων τοιοῦτοι ἵπποι· φαίης ἂν αὐτοὺς τρυφᾷν σὺν τοῖς δεσπόταις, καὶ τῷ μεγέθει τοῦ σώματος, καὶ τῷ κάλλει, κ. τ. λ. These, 204probably, he meant to contrast, as well as their proud riders, with the sorry-looking, unsightly horses of Libya, (active, however, and patient of fatigue), and the unsightly people of the country.

The naturalist then proceeds to say that such also are his opinions with regard to the dogs of each country; and specifies, as examples corroborative of his hypothesis, the Cretan, Molossian, and Ælian. de Nat. Animal. L. iii. c. 2.Carmanian—κύων Κρῆσσα κούφη, καὶ ἁλτικὴ, καὶ ὀρειβασίαις σύντροφος· καὶ μέντοι καὶ αὐτοὶ Κρῆτες τοιούτους αὑτοὺς παραδεικνῦσι, καὶ ᾄδει ἡ φήμη. θυμικώτατος δὲ κυνῶν Μολοσσὸς, ἐπεὶ θυμωδέστατοι καὶ οἱ ἄνδρες. Ἀνὴρ δὲ Καρμάνιος καὶ κύων ἀμφότερα ἀγριώτατα καὶ μειλιχθῆναι ἄτεγκτα φύσιν. A farther example of this prevalent notion is found in the lines of Gratius on the crafty Acarnanian dog—“clandestinus Acarnan:”—

alluding to a passage of the history of Thucydides, where he relates that Demosthenes placed 400 Acarnanians in ambuscade, in a hollow way near Olpæ; whence they issued forth in the heat of the subsequent engagement, and by their sudden assault on the rear of the Peloponnesians, completely routed them. A similar reference to national character is evident in the passage of Gratius, on crossing defective breeds of dogs with others in which opposite excellencies exist:

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But to descend from these general remarks on the supposed assimilation of men and animals, cohabitants of the same soil, to the particular kennel-rolls of Greece and Rome. There appears to have been a threefold distinction of Canes Venatici, acknowledged by classic authors, during the imperial government of Rome. I do not mean that this classification is accurately observed by all the cynegetical and popular authorities; but it may be traced, more or less clearly, in the writings of Gratius,⁠[321] Seneca, Artemidorus, Oppian, Claudian, and Julius Firmicus.

The Faliscian notes a triple division in the fragment of his Halieutic poem:

“In cane sagacitas prima est,” says Seneca in one of his Epistles, “si investigare debet feras; cursus, si consequi; audacia, si mordere et invadere.”

We find nearly a similar arrangement in the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus, a strange visionary of Ephesus, who spent his whole life in endeavouring to solve the mysteries, hidden, as he conceived, in Artemidori Oneirocrit. L. ii. c. xi.dreams—τῶν κυνῶν οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ θήραν τρέφονται, καὶ τούτων οἱ μέν εἰσιν ἰχνευταὶ, οἱ δὲ ὁμόσε τοῖς θηρίοις χωροῦσιν· οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ φυλακῇ τῶν κτημάτων, οὓς οἰκουροὺς καὶ δεσμίους λέγομεν, κ. τ. λ.

Claudian, in his third book De Laudibus Stiliconis, describing the active co-operation of Diana and her nymphs in advancing the honour of his hero, “Consulis in plausum,” distinctly specifies a triple division:

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and then inverting the order of sequence, names, apparently in illustration of his classes, the Cretan, Spartan, and Briton:

The first we must acknowledge to be nare sagaces; the second pedibus celeres, the slenderest and speediest hounds, probably, known to the poet, in the absence of the Vertragus,—whom alone we consider swift of foot, and entitled to rank under the class so denominated. The Britannæ justly exemplify the dogs of combat—gravioribus aptæ morsibus.

Julius Firmicus comprehends the whole genus under the triple distinction of “Molossi, Vertragi, et qui sunt ad venationes accomodati,”—meaning to include in the latter periphrasis the whole class of sagacious hounds, as he does the pugnacious under the title of Molossi.

Of Oppian’s tripartite arrangement, exemplified in the portraits which he has drawn of the individuals representative of each class, and of his farther distinction, founded on purity and commixture of blood, I shall hereafter speak; assuming at present, on the authority of the cited passages, that all the more celebrated varieties of the canine race, mentioned in the Cynegetica of Greece and Rome, of the date referred to, may be classified under the triple division of pugnaces, sagaces, and celeres.⁠[322]

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In Xenophon, and the earlier Greek writers, we do not trace more than a twofold division into pugnaces and sagaces; the varieties of the latter class differing, perhaps, amongst themselves in degrees of swiftness. Indeed, that they did so is evident from what Socrates remarks of the sagacity and speed of different individuals of the race, in the well-known interview with the beautiful, meretricious Xenophon. Memor. L. iii. c. xi.Theodota:—ὅτι δὲ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἀποδιδράσκουσιν οἱ λαγὼς ἄλλας κτῶνται κύνας, αἵτινες, ᾗ ἂν ἐκ τῆς νομῆς εἰς τὴν εὐνὴν ἀπέλθωσι, τῇ ὀσμῇ αἰσθανόμεναι, εὑρίσκουσιν αὐτούς· ὅτι δὲ ποδώκεις εἰσὶν, ὥστε καὶ ἐκ τοῦ φανεροῦ τρέχοντες ἀποφεύγειν, ἄλλας αὖ κύνας ταχείας παρασκευάζονται, ἵνα κατὰ πόδας ἁλίσκωνται. The swift-footed of this passage must not be interpreted as the celeres of our third class, which will be found to contain only the Vertragus of Arrian;—on whose authority it is affirmed that the greyhound was unknown in Greece in the days of the Socratic Xenophon. Probably, they were the most speedy of the Canes Laconici, to which the philosopherH. in Dianam. alludes—the θάσσονες αὐράων κυνοσουρίδες of Callimachus.

In accordance with the distinctions pointed out in the classical kennels is the threefold character of ancient hunting: but as coursing properly so called, Vide Jani Vlitii Venat. Novantiq.(the third variety of chase peculiar to the Vertragus), was of late introduction in comparison with hunting, the two grand divisions of the sports of the field may be considered as primarily founded on the twofold distinction of canes pugnaces or bellicosi, and canes sagaces; and by Gratius, under the terms arma and artes, both are vividly depicted.

“The one,” says Christopher Wase, “is a desperate and gladiator-like entering the lists with beasts, and assaulting them by violence; which was the school of cruelty and ignorant course of ancient Nimrods: the other a crafty circumventing them by wiles, which is the child of ingenious invention, much assisting man to reestablish him in his empire over the beasts of the field, that hath been so much empayred.” Then, again, he observes, “the magnum opus is bold and hazardous hunting of great beasts, and leve opus is hard-riding and pursuit of little fugacious quarry.”

It was left to the courser of Nicomedia, the Bithynian Xenophon, to place on record in his supplementary Cynegeticus, and to illustrate from his personal experience, the third variety of chase with dogs peculiar to Celtica;—which we have designated as forming a 208class of themselves, under the title of pedibus celeres, of the greatest speed of foot and least sagacity of nose of the whole genus, running entirely on sight of their game. The Celtic or Gallic hound does not appear to have been introduced generally into the more southern parts of Europe, till after the dissolution of the commonwealth of Rome. He is first mentioned by Ovid; and his style of coursing the hare so exquisitely described, that it must have been derived from actual experience in the field rather than hearsay; which latter alone seems to have given him admission into the Cynegeticon of Gratius, Ovid’s contemporary.

The earliest systematic account of the two first varieties of Venatio, will be found in the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon; who describes in the 6th chapter the style of hunting the hare in the mountainous, woodland regions of Greece, with all its poaching-gear: and in the 9th, 10th, and 11th chapters, the chase of deer, boars, lions, pards, lynxes, panthers, and bears. The Greeks were entirely unacquainted with the third species ofJ. Vlitii Venat. Novant. Venatio, named, for distinction’s sake, Venatio cursoria, as the others are V. bellica, and V. indagatoria.

The animals obnoxious to the chase were suitable to its different varieties, and coped with by classic hunters according to the prowess of each game. Some creatures being timid and fugacious, others of great strength and ferocity, and a third class wily and artful,—the hunters were wont, in the words of Plin. Paneg. Trag. dict.Pliny’s panegyric, “certare cum fugacibus feris cursu, cum audacibus robore, cum callidis astu;”—thereby acquiring, in Diana’s school of mimic war, the necessary experimental knowledge for following the flying foe, or contending with the daring, or the subtle, in the field of real battle.⁠[323]

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Gratius has elegantly sketched the beasts of Venery in his Halieutic fragment:⁠[324]

Oppian’s distribution of them into classes is nearly similar:

And in Claudian we recognise a summary classification of the same distinctive characters, adapted to the threefold varieties of the dog already noticed in his poem:

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A minute description of each particular chase would exceed the limits of a compendium,⁠[325] and lead me into too extensive a field.

Let a few brief sketches of the more celebrated suffice—beginning with the hare-chase of the keenest and most accomplished sportsman of the classic ages.

After the snares and nets are duly set, and a man placed to watch them, the first-fruits of the sport being vowed to Apollo and De Venatione c. vi. 13.Diana Ἀγροτέρα, Xenophon slips one of his most keen-nosed dogs, σοφωτάτη ἰχνεύειν, the rest of the pack being held singly at the covert. If this finder hit on a scent, a second dog is immediately slipped, and a third, and so on till the whole pack are in full cry after the started hare. The huntsman follows with his pole, and chlamys wrapped about his hand, Sic apud Dindorfii Annot. in loco, pro κακάς.cheering the dogs, Ἰῶ κύνες, ἰῶ κύνες, σαφῶς γε ὦ κύνες, καλῶς γε ὦ κύνες,—taking care not to head the game—μὴ ὑπαντᾷν· ἄπορον γὰρ—for nobody but a bungler and no-sportsman is guilty of this. It is then customary to shout to the watchman at the nets, Αὐτῷ παῖς, αὐτῷ παῖς, παῖ δὴ, παῖ δὴ—To her, boy! to her, boy! now, boy! now, boy!—the latter replying whether the hare be taken or not. If she be captured, the hounds are called off, and begin to draw for a second; but if not, and they again hit off the scent, the halloo should be Εὖγε, εὖγε ὦ κύνες, ἕπεσθε ὦ κύνες. If the dogs are got very forward, so that the huntsman cannot keep up, but is thrown out—neither seeing them, nor hearing their cry—he should keep running on, calling to every one he happens to come near, and inquiring for the pack—ἦ κατεῖδες ὠῆ τὰς κύνας;

When he finds them, if still on scent, he should cheer, and call every dog by name as often as possible, varying the intonations of 211his voice. If the hare has made for the mountains, he should encourage them withSic apud C. Gesner. vox bacchantium in mountibus! Εὖα κύνες, εὖα ὦ κύνες: but if they have over-shot the scent, he should call them back—Hark back, dogs! hark back!—οὐ πάλιν, οὐ πάλιν ὦ κύνες: when brought back to the scent, he should draw around, making many casts,Vide Savary Alb. Dianæ Leporicidæ. (κύκλους,⁠[326]) even up to the line of the nets, encouraging the dogs till they again pick up the Xen. de Venat. c. vi. 23.scent—αἱ δὲ διαῤῥιπτοῦσαι τὰς οὐρὰς, καὶ ἑαυταῖς ἐμπίπτουσαι, καὶ πολλὰ ὑπερπηδῶσαι, καὶ ἐπανακλαγγάνουσαι, ἐπαναίρουσαι τὰς κεφαλὰς, εἰσβλέπουσαι εἰς τὸν κυνηγέτην, ἐπιγνωρίζουσαι ἀληθῆ εἶναι ἤδη ταῦτα, ὑφ’ αὑτῶν ἀναστήσουσι τὸν λαγὼ, καὶ ἐπιᾶσι κεκλαγγυῖαι—starting off again at full cry.

The watchman at the nets gives a particular shout, significant of the hare’s capture in the ἄρκυς, or her escape by going beyond, or stopping short. If she be taken, they try for another; if not, they continue the pursuit of the same. Weary at length with their day’s work, the huntsman must himself, towards evening, assist the pack in searching out the poor tired hare at her quat, Xenophon de Venatione. c. vi.(κατακλίνεται γὰρ ἐν μικρῷ τὸ θηρίον, καὶ οὐκ ἀνίσταται ὑπὸ κόπου καὶ φόβου,) and bring them forward with encouragement; “cheering the meek dogs much, the eager ones little, the intermediate moderately,” till they kill her κατὰ πόδας, at force, or drive her into the nets: and thus at last will the huntsman become master of theJ. Sarisberiensis Policrat. L. i. c. iv. hare—“infelicem bestiolam lepusculum timidum tanto fortassè prædabitur apparatu.”

Oppian’s instructions on hare-hunting, contained in a few verses at the latter end of his fourth Cynegetic, are of little interest. Hares should never be chased up hill, as their shape is particularly adapted for it, and they avail themselves of the advantage whenever they can get to a rising ground:

Beaten roads should be avoided by huntsmen, and ploughed lands preferred for sport. De Naturâ Animal. L. xiii. c. 14.Ælian has left us an animated description of the hare’s shifts and prowess in avoiding her pursuers, and the contempt212 with which she looks down, οἷον ἀπὸ σκοπιᾶς, on their fruitless efforts to overtake her.

The stag-hunt is treated of by Xenophon, in his ninth chapter, with snares, traps, &c. Indian dogs are here preferred, for their size, strength, speed, and courage. But as his name-sake has written on the same variety of chase with Celtic hounds and Scythian horses, I pass on to the boar-hunt, in which the former is diffuse—tooEjusdem c. x. diffuse for more than a bare reference. Indian and Locrian hounds are selected from the pugnacious class, and Cretan and Spartan from the sagacious, to assist the sportsman in his attack of the wild boar. The latter hound appears to be employed, on this occasion, as a lime-dog, or inductor, to find out the lair of the beast. Purse-nets, javelins, προβόλια, and ποδοστράβαι, are in request. “Jamque apud frondosum tumulum,” says Apuleii Met. L. viii. p. 512.Apuleius, in a vivid, but somewhat wordy sketch, “ramorumque densis tegminibus umbrosum, prospectu vestigatorum obseptis campis, canes venationis indagini generosæ, mandato, cubili residentes invaderent bestias, immittuntur: statimque solertis disciplinæ memores partitæ totos præcingunt aditus: tacitâque priùs servatâ mussitatione, signo sibi repentino reddito, latratibus fervidis dissonisque miscent omnia”—“aper immanis atque invisitatus exsurgit,” &c.

Ovid’s Calydonian boar-hunt, with the “lecta manus juvenum” of Meleager’s confederacy, will occur to the classical reader, and farther illustrate this perilous species of chase;⁠[327] which, with others yet more dangerous, described by Xenophon in the 11th chapter of his Manual, and by Oppian in his fourth Cynegetic, constitute examples of the Horat. Od. L. ii. i. 6.bellica Venatio, “periculosæ plenum opus aleæ,” so emblematic of actual war.

The Athenian is very brief on the subject of lion, pard, lynx, panther, and bear-hunting. These ferocious brutes are commonly 213etaken by stratagem; rarely, if ever, at force. Oppian is more diffuse, amplifying the lion-chase with the Libyan, Indian, and Æthiopian practices for capturing the king of beasts.

As a splendid specimen of poetical talent in this too much neglected author, (for he richly deserves the character bestowed on his works by J. C. Scaliger, C. Barthius, and other eminent scholars,) I select, from the latter part of the same book, the following extract—a description of an Armenian bear-hunt. The bear is found with the limehound of the country, the nets, snares, and μήρινθος ἐΰστροφος are set, and the din of pursuit commences:

But farewell the detail of these savage chases!⁠[328]—

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The most lively and striking picture of classic Venation, in genere, which I have met with in the Latin language, is contained in one of Seneca’s tragedies; which, let them be the productions of whom they may, contain much brilliant descriptive poetry. The whole arrangement of the field is admirably given in the Hippolytus. The duties of the δικτυαγωγὸς, ἰχνευτὴς, κυναγωγὸς, ἀρκυωρὸς, and λινόπτης, are successively detailed in the prologue, spoken by this rigid paragon of chastity himself, Xenophon de Venatione c. i.(σωφροσύνῃ καὶ ὁσιότητι μακαρισθεὶς,) in the character of Magister Venationis.

says the son of Theseus to his attendant huntsmen—describing the local scenery of different parts of Attica, most abundant in game—and allotting them their respective stations and duties, with the mute limehounds, (“canibus tacitis,”) the noisy pack, and divers implements of the sylvan chase:⁠[329]

So much for the furniture of the chase, its inventors, and practice, by way of introduction to our triple classification of the Canes Venatici of the classic ages. Oppian. Cyneg L. i. 367.We will now proceed, οἶμον ἐπὶ σκυλάκων.

CLASS I.

In the first class of the triple division—quibus est audacia præceps, or gravioribus aptæ morsibus—are included all the canes pugnaces or bellicosi—pugnacious dogs of war.

The Mede, Celt, Ser or Indian, Albanian, Iberian, Lycaonian or Arcadian, Hyrcanian, Locrian, Libyan, Egyptian, Pannonian, Magnesian, Molossian, Briton, Athamanian, Acarnanian, and a few others nearly allied.

CLASS II.

In the second class of Canes Venatici, under the title of nare sagaces, are placed all keen-nosed dogs of scent.

The Spartan, Cretan, Carian, Etolian or Calydonian, Metagon, Belgian, Gelonian, Umbrian, Tuscan, Armenian, Petronius, Agassæus or Briton, Segusian, and others of inferior note.

CLASS III.

In the third class, entitled pedibus celeres, those dogs alone are comprehended, which ran on sight of their game, as the Vertragus, and possibly the Sicamber: of the latter, however, I know nothing beyond the meagre allusion of Gratius to his speed, and the apparent distinction made between him and the Vertraha, in the Cynegeticon of this poet:

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Janus Vlitius considers the Sicambrian to be the Gallo-Belgic hound of more modern days, and identical with the Ovidian canis Gallicus: but the latter is more probably the Vertraha of Gratius, the οὐέρτραγος of the younger Xenophon. The Sicambrian people, strictly speaking, were Strabo L. vii.Germans, and not Belgians; as they dwelt on the eastern, or Germanic side of the Rhine.

On first comparing the different types of the Oppianic Canes Venatici with those of the Latin Cynegetica, I was misled by the authority of annotators to an admission that the type, so particularly described by the Greek poet in his first book, μηκεδανὸν κρατερὸν δέμας, κ. τ. λ. vs. 401. ad vs. 412. was of the sagacious hound, the Petronian or such-like. But this interpretation, in addition to the want of resemblance of the picture to the supposed original, implies, in a notorious copyist of his predecessors’ labours and a keen observer of natural history, the entire omission of the swiftest of the canine tribe, the canis Gallicus or Vertragus; which, if known by fame in the age of Gratius, alluded to by him in his Cynegeticon, accurately portrayed by Ovid as to his style of running, and subsequently, and more minutely, by the younger Xenophon, could not, under any balance of probabilities, have been lost to the sporting world, between the time of Arrian and that at which Nemesian flourished:—by the latter of whom the greyhound is most beautifully depicted, and the mode of initiating greyhound puppies in the hare-course detailed with the hand of a master. I am, therefore, on more mature reflection, inclined to consider the passage referred to descriptive of the greyhound type, the third class of ancient hounds, the family of pedibus celeres.⁠[330] That Rittershusius makes no allusion 217to such a resemblance, does not surprise me; for, by pointing out a supposed defect of the picture, compared with a sketch of Gratius, this learned and laborious commentator proves that he was not aware of the variety of dog intended to be delineated by his author—perhaps himself unacquainted with its type in nature. The very feature of the δολίχοσκιος οὐρὴ, condemned by this editor as burthensome to Canes cursores, with a preference of the “cauda brevis” of Gratius, (suited to the Canes bellicosi alone,) is so remarkable and useful an additament to the greyhound’s form, that, instead of burthening, it essentially assists him as a Cynographia Curiosa c. ii. 12.Canis cursor, (“ad conversiones in cursu reciproco regendas,”) and much strengthens the resemblance of the Oppianic picture to its Celtic prototype in Arrian.

The conclusion of this sketch is followed by that of the Canis pugnax or bellicosus of the first class, hereafter cited,Oppian. Cyneg. L. i. 413. θοῦροι δ’ αὖθ’ ἕτεροι, κ. τ. λ.; and this again by the amusing and lively picture of the keen-scented beagle orEjusdem vs. 467. hare-hound—σκυλάκων γένος ἄλκιμον ἰχνευτήρων, κ. τ. λ.—the representative of which is taken from Britain, and constitutes, according to my theory, Oppian’s specimen (rather a sorry one, it must be allowed) of the second class of Canes Venatici, termed nare sagaces. Are we not, then, allowed to conclude that the same tripartite distinction of Canes Venatici was acknowledged by the Cilician poet, as we have already traced in the more systematic authorities cited?⁠[331] The latter did not escape the notice of the 218learned writer of the Venatio Novantiqua, himself an experienced and ardent sportsman; but he has not corroborated the earlier classification of others with the more recent evidence of the poet of Anazarbus—indeed, he seems to view the Oppianic hound (Cyn. i. 401.) as sagaci-celer, and the Vertragus as unknown both to Pollux and Oppian.

The Cilician gives a decided preference to those canine tribes which are specifically pure in their breed—φῦλα μονόφυλα—and enumerates, without any attempt at classification, all the tribes known to him, under their geographical appellations:⁠[332]

But if the kennel-master acted on the principles laid down by this poet, and his Latin predecessor, Gratius, and crossed his pack with irreconcilable varieties out of different families, belonging to different countries, (and that he did so we have evidence in the irregular and ill-disciplined muster-roll of Ovid,) although the names on Oppian’s file might remain, the animals must have been so changed by the “superinduction of opposite qualities,” that a genuine breed of any one variety must have been most rare. To this general amalgamation of heterogeneous forms and qualities in the canine race, must be attributed the custom of applying the terms Molossian and Spartan219 to the Canes bellicosi and Canes sagaces respectively, gregatim—the dogs of Epirus and Sparta being held the best of their several classes.⁠[333] And, for the same reason, a true Molossian or Spartan of pure blood must have fallen to the lot of few of Hist. Animal L. ix. c. i.Dian’s worshippers. Aristotle speaks with praise of the Spartan and Molossian cross,⁠[334] but awards the highest price in the Spartan kennel to the purest blood: and Themistius, in his first oration, states it as an acknowledged rule in breeding, that the kennel be supplied from bitches of the purest and most unadulterated blood.

Even after the introduction of the Vertragus, and the commixture of his breed with the older varieties of sporting dogs—

the names derived from Sparta and Molosse were still kept up, and prostituted in many instances on most degenerate brutes.

With regard to the original geographical distribution of the three varieties of bellicosi, sagaces, and celeres, and of their respective chases,⁠[335] the most prevalent opinion of continental writers, who have 220devoted their attention to the Cynegetica of Greece and Rome, is that the last mentioned originally came from Gaul, the sagacious from Greece, and the bellicose from Asia. War-dogs of pure blood are nearly extinct in the British islands, and are becoming more rare on the continent of Europe; being much crossed with the sagacious and swift-footed tribes. Vlitius, himself a Dutchman, naturally espouses the Belgic origin of the Belgic, or, more correctly speaking, the Celtic dog. Spelmanni Glossar. p. 113.Spelman, on the contrary, claims him for the honour of Britain; and, in addition, we have always deemed some sorts of bellicosi and sagaces indigenous of this country. Mr. Whitaker, in his History of Manchester, gives to the ancient Britons the old English hound, or talbot, as the parent stock of the celebrated sagacious hounds of our island: and it is found, by experience, that this dog degenerates in every other part of the world—a strong presumptive proof of his being indigenous of Britain. The earliest record of the greyhound allots him to Gallia; and we have no hesitation in considering him of Celtic origin, notwithstanding the offensive disclaimer of Savary of Caen—

No exclusive national claim can be made for the pugnacious tribe, almost every nation of antiquity having had its particular variety; of which none surpassed the Britannus and Molossus, natives of regions remote from each other, unconnected, probably, in their lineage, and united alone in untameable ferocity of character.

The translator of Gratius, after enumerating the various sorts of the British hound, greyhound, and mastiff, (which he calls “indigena, or native of England,”) Certaine Illustrations of the Cynegeticall Poem, &c. p. 34.observes:—“all these dogs have deserved to be famous in adjacent and remote countries, whither they are sent for great rarities, and ambitiously sought for by their lords and princes, although only the fighting dogs seem to have been known to the antient authors: and perhaps in that age hunting was not so much cultivated by our own countrymen.”

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CANES BELLICOSI or PUGNACES.

The type of this class is given by Gratius in the following lines, which must be taken as a general description, requiring some latitude in its application to individuals:⁠[336]

By its side we may place its counterpart in Greek;—for, notwithstanding the Oppianic sketch has been appropriated by Bodinus to the Albanese, it certainly may be viewed in a broader light, as a picture in outline of the whole pugnacious family, without reference to individuals:

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The introduction of a third, more recent portrait, will be justified by the chaste Latinity of Peter Angelio, and the faithful accuracy of his pen:

The quarry of these savage hounds consisted of animals more ferocious than their assailants—such as

Following the order of the poetical manual, to which we are indebted for our first-cited outline of the race, the Mede and Celt arrest our earliest attention, followed by the Ser, Lycaonian, Hyrcanian, Briton, Molossian, and others:

The Persian appears to have been a connecting link between the pugnacious and sagacious classes, though his neighbours of Media 223and Hyrcania were a purely savage breed. The Persian was a mongrel variety—

The character of the “indocilis Medus” we may infer from Ælian’s description, already cited, of the men and horses of the country—which at the conclusion he also extends to the De Naturâ Animal. L. iii. c. ii.dogs—ταῦτά τοι καὶ περὶ τῶν κυνῶν ἔπεισι νοεῖν μοι. The latter were fierce, impetuous, and of great size.

There is evidently no connexion between the Celtæ of Gratius and κύνες Κελτικαὶ of Arrian, though deriving their name from the same source, and seemingly of the same country. The former were originally perhaps the only varieties of the canine species inmates of the kennels of Gaul,

the sagacious and swift-footed hounds being subsequently admitted therein;—but not until the older mode of hunting ferocious animals with savage dogs had fallen into disrepute, from the superior attraction of the improved style; or into disuse, from the gradual extirpation of beasts of prey. As the latter disappeared, or were driven into remote fastnesses, we may suppose the more timid and fugacious creatures supplied their place; and, multiplying in the ratio of the others’ diminution, afforded abundant quarry to the Vertragus, and the archetype of the chien courant of modern France.

How beautifully are the more innoxious sports of sylvan life, and superior claims of the hare and deer hunt, touched by Ovid in the fable of Venus and Adonis. The goddess of love turns huntress:

No wonder that the Celtic people by degrees discontinued the warlike chase, fraught with innumerable perils, and substituted the harmless pursuit of fugacious quarry, with keen-scented and swift-footed hounds, according to the injunctions of the meretricious queen to her disobedient “sweete boy;”

which, in the days of Arrian, constituted their principal field sport.

Julius Pollux, in his Onomasticon, mentions the Celtic war-dogs, and Oppian also includes Κελτοὶ in the muster-roll of his first cynegetic.⁠[339] It is probable that they were a-kin to those of ancient Britain; for we are told by Strabo, who lived soon after Gratius, that the exports from this island to Gaul consisted of Strabo L. iv. p. 138.δέρματα, καὶ ἀνδράποδα, καὶ κύνες εὐφυεῖς πρὸς τὰς κυνηγεσίας. Κελτοὶ δὲ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πολέμους χρῶνται, καὶ τούτοις, καὶ τοῖς ἐπιχωρίοις. Whence it appears that the Celts had native Canes Venatici which they employed in war,⁠[340] as well as those imported from Britain.⁠[341] In this 225adaptation of canine ferocity the Celtæ were not peculiar; but as dogs, thus applied, can scarce be considered in their sporting character, it is unnecessary to multiply citations. Let the few instances hereafter adduced suffice on this head. Whether these Celtic dogs are the Gallic hybrids of the natural historian I cannot say: “hoc idem,” says Pliny,L. viii. c. 40. ex Vlitii Emend. “è lupis Galli, quorum greges suum quisque ductorem è canibus et Lyciscam habent. Illum in venatu comitantur, illi parent. Namque inter se exercent etiam magisteria.” There were whole packs of these dogs in every chase or forest, “that had for their leader some particular demi-wolf, which the rest accompanied in hunting, obeyed, and were directed by; keeping an order among themselves of government and mastership.”

Gratius mentions, in the next place, the Ser, the Lycaonian or Arcadian, the Hyrcanian, and the union of the latter with the tiger.

The Seræ were a nation of Æthiopia near the origin of the Nile, and also of India between the Indus and Hydaspes: but “the famous Seræ were a people of Asia, the farthest to the east beyond China towards Scythia without Imaus,” according to Wase’s geography of Gratius. As the poet does not record the fame of the Canes Indici under their usual denomination, we may consider the Seric dog as the redoubted Indian—“genus intractabilis iræ.”

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The Indian dog is noticed by Herodotus, Aristotle, Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Plutarch, Pollux, Ælian, Athenaeus, Themistius, and Phile, among the Greeks; and by Pliny, Solinus, and Quintus Curtius, among the Latins. The size, strength, speed, and courage of this dog induced Xenophon to recommend him for boar and deer hunting—Xenophon, de Venat. c. ix.εἰσὶ γὰρ ἰσχυραὶ, μεγάλαι, ποδώκεις, οὐκ ἄψυχοι, says this experienced sportsman; and Ælian adds to his good qualities keenness of sight or scent in tracking—Ælian. de Natur. Animal. L. viii. c. 1.εὐγενεῖς καὶ ἴχνη καταγνῶναι θηρίων ἀγαθαὶ, κ. τ. λ. J. Pollux, on the authority of Nicander, derives the Canes Indici from Actæon’s pack; who, when they had recovered from their madness, Ovid. Metam. L. iii. 140.“satiatæ sanguine herili,” passed the Euphrates, and wandered into India. Polluc. Onom. L. v. c. v. 39.He particularly distinguishes them from the Hyrcanian, with which they have been by some historians confounded. Both the last-mentioned authors, Ælian. de Nat. Animal. L. iv. c. 19.and also Plutarch, would have us believe that the lion was the only antagonist with whom this courageous dog would willingly contend:Plutarch. p. 1787. Ed. Steph.—τῶν δὲ ἄλλων ζώων ὑπερφρονοῦντα πάντων, says Plutarch; and Ælian affirms his victory over the lion; but Themistius adds the pard to his chosen antagonists, to the exclusion of inferior combatants, as wolves and foxes. Brodæi Annot. in Oppian. p. 43.Fable however and history are so closely blended in the records of canine biography, that we are compelled occasionally to doubt. And did we not relieve ourselves by incredulity, the marvellous tale of patient courage narrated by Ælian, as manifested by this fierce animal, would make us shudder at the bare recital. It is found in detail in the first chapter of his eighth book de Naturâ Animalium,⁠[342] and succinctly copied by Pollux in the fifth chapter of the fifth book of his Onomasticon.

The cruel experiment, transmitted to us by Dr. Goldsmith, as having been practised on the British Molossus, is quite eclipsed by this more barbarous exhibition of the innate fortitude of the dog of India. For in the latter case, the commencement of the inhuman test of patient courage was the amputation of the tail, and the conclusion decollation. The legs of the poor brute were successively cut off, one by one, without his quitting his hold of the lion, his chosen antagonist:—and when at last the neck was severed from the 227body, the teeth still adhered with the trunkless, but still mordacious head, (credat Judæus,) suspended to the wound. But let the credulous story-teller speak for himself:Ælian. de Nat. Animal. L. viii. c. 1.—καὶ τελευτῶντες τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ λοιπὸν σῶμα ἀφεῖλον· ὀδόντες δὲ ἐκείνῃ ἤρτηντο τῆς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀντιλαβῆς, καὶ ἡ κεφαλὴ ἠωρεῖτο μετέωρος ἐκ τοῦ λέοντος, αὐτοῦ μέντοι τοῦ δακόντος ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὐκ ἔτι ὄντος. The dog like the British bull-dog was memorable for never quitting his hold—a feature in his ferocious character remarked by Phile in his iambic versification of Ælian’s marvellous tale.

In the scarce plates of Stradan, engraven by Galle, there is a picture of the Canis Indicus, as I conceive, fighting with the elephant and lion. The annexed quatrain, by Kilian Dufflæus, sufficiently explains it, but is not worthy of citation. The following poetical portrait, however, by a far better scholar, will be read with pleasure, whether viewed as delineating the Indian, or his congener, the Albanian:

Bodin supposes Oppian to allude to the Canis Indicus in his 1st Cynegetic, vs. 413.; but as the poet does not mention any name, and particularly specifies a want of speed in the dogs he describes, I should rather refer his sketch to the Molossian or true Epirote, (if it must have a particular application,) than to the Indian or Albanian. I have no doubt, however, that it is, as already stated, a general description of the pugnacious type, and therefore includes both Indian and Molossian.

Many of the anecdotes of the Indian dog are promiscuously told of the Albanian, Iberian, and Hyrcanian; and it certainly is difficult to point out any distinctive characters between them. Of the latter I shall presently speak, in the rotation in which he is recorded by Gratius. The Albanian and Iberian are undoubtedly consimilars, strongly impregnated with the Molossian cast—natives of the Asiatic district indifferently called Iberia and Albania. They are celebrated by modern travellers as much as by classic historical and cynegetical writers. Hist. Natur. L. viii. c. xl.Pliny does not name the country of the dog “inusitatæ magnitudinis” given to Alexander by a king of Albania;⁠[343] though it would be a fair conclusion that the dog was of 229the same country as the king. Yet Strabo L. xv.Strabo, notwithstanding he commemorates the prowess of the Albanian race of dogs, particularly notes that those presented to the king of Macedonia were Indian; and he is supported by Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and Julius Pollux, differing somewhat in the historical detail. Solinus, for the most part a copyist of Pliny and Strabo, is, on this occasion, it may be, mistaken in assigning to them an Albanian origin. Speaking of the Albanese, he says: C. J. Solini Polyhistor. c. xv.“Apud hos populos nati canes feris anteponuntur, frangunt tauros, leones premunt, detinent quid-quid objectum: quibus ex causis meruerunt etiam annalibus tradi. Legimus petenti Indiam Alexandro, à rege Albaniæ dono duos missos,” &c.—and again, “Hoc genus canes crescunt ad formam amplissimam, terrificis latratibus ultra rugitus insonantes.” Vide Bodini Comment. in Oppian. p. 63.May we not reconcile these statements by considering the Albanese dogs of the Latin historians—Pliny, Solinus, and Curtius—the Indians of the Greek authors—Strabo, Plutarch, Diodorus, Ælian, and Pollux—and the Albania of the former, the India of the latter? The inhabitants of Albania and India were both excessively addicted to hunting—Strabo L. xi.θηρευτικοί τε καὶ αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ κύνες αὐτῶν εἰς ὑπερβολήν.

The Iberian dog is mentioned by Julius Pollux, Oppian, and Nemesian—the latter poet merely saying the breed is not to be despised by sportsmen;

and the former recommending it to be crossed with Sarmatian blood,

Darcius records the strength, courage, and velocity of the Albanian breed;

and two lines below mentions the dogs, “quos dives Iberia pascit,” as if distinct from the Albanese—which, if Asiatic, they certainly resembled. It is, however, possible, that Darcius may allude to 230European Iberia, or Spain. Indeed, the geographical appropriation of Oppian’s Iberian dogs is doubtful in the opinion of commentators. Brodæi Annotationes in Oppian.Brodæus assigns the Iberian horse of Oppian (Cyn. i. vs. 284.) to Asia; but the people mentioned by the poet under the same name, in connexion with the Celts, in the episode at the conclusion of his second Halieutic, are evidently inhabitants of Western Europe. Jones’s Oppian’s Halieutics.And again—his description of the tunnies “rushing from th’ Atlantic deep,” into the Mediterranean, and of their subsequent capture along its shores, places the Iberians a second time in the West:

however, whether Asiatic or European, it is sufficient for our classification that the dogs were of the pugnacious class.

The modern representative of the classical Albanese occupies a more extensive district than his ferocious prototype, who was confined to the region between Colchos and Armenia; whereas his descendant is found in Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus.

Of the classical Albanian, in his character of a dog of war, Valerius Flaccus has left us the following very animated description:

And the fame of his tribe, as spread over these countries at large, is celebrated by the chaste poet of Barga in his 5th Cynegeticon, with the same song, decies repetita, of leonine and elephantine quarry:

Opportunity offers, in introducing the dog of Arcadia to the reader’s notice, of speaking of the semiferous race of lupine dogs, the demi-wolves of the ancient Cynegetica.⁠[344] The cross of the wolf and dog is of considerable antiquity; indeed the belief of its existence may be traced very generally through the popular works of the classic ages. Under the Spartan dog, in the second class, I shall again allude to hybrid dogs, and refer to Mr. Hunter’s paper on the subject in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. At present, it may be stated that the cross of the wolf and domestic dog is an established one, and that the breed, so obtained, has been carried forward for many generations. Aristotle, I believe, first remarked the sexual intercourse of these congeners in Cyrene; and, from the fact as stated by him, Cardan Vulgar Errors. B. i.(“a great inquirer after truth, but too greedy a receiver of it,” according to Sir Thomas Brown,) inferred the gradual degeneration of wolves into the canine type.⁠[345] “Ut lupos et canes,” says Brodæus in Oppianum, “mutuò coire fatear, Diodori, Ovidii, (‘Deque lupo concepta Nape,’) ac complurium facit auctoritas.” As the mule is born from the horse and ass, remarks Galen, so a mixed breed may be generated from the wolf and dog.⁠[346] The race of old reported to have been sprung 232from the latter connexion was that of Arcadia, the Lycaonian; thence called, peradventure, Lycas by Simonides, and Lycisca by Virgil and Ovid—Scaliger.“Mista lupo canis est signatâ voce Lycisca.”⁠[347] That the Lycas of the canine epitaph was of lupine origin, we may conjecture from the name; but the Cean poet specifying other localities as the scenes of his hound’s exploits in life, and Pollux calling her Λυκάδα τὴν Θεττάλην, some other kennel may put forward a claim, instead of that of Arcadia, for the honour of the breed; or the name may be merely an appellative distinction, unconnected with lineage;—still the monumental elegy is deserving of citation:

Gratius contrasts the docility of Lycaonian dogs, the Τεγεῆται of Oppian, with the intractability of the Indian,

The breed of the northern part of Peloponnesus, having been of great note, and the son of Pelasgus Ovid. Metam. L. i. 198.(“notus feritate Lycaon”) having been converted into a wolf—the first subject, it may be, of lycanthropy—the dogs indifferently called Arcadian and Lycaonian, were probably, says C. Wase, Vide Pausan. in Arcad. c. ii.“heirs of his own body naturally begotten.” Many Arcadian hounds are found in the Ovidian pack, among the mistaken pursuers of the unfortunate son of Aristæus—

possessed of great speed and resolution:

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The poet elsewhere bestows on the hound of Arcadia the local epithet of Mænalian, from Mount Mænalus—

Is it not probable that some of the hounds of chase, bestowed by the Arcadian God on the Goddess of hunting, were culled by his goatish majesty from the kennels of the country of Lycaon, where Pan himself gratified his sporting ardour?—the brace of pie-balled—the leash of long-eared—and the spotted hound?

The other seven which Pan contributed to Dian’s pack, being θάσσονες αὐράων, and destined for more timid quarry, are placed under the Spartan family, of which they were the fleetest members.

Whether all the dogs “of Arcas kinde,” as sings Golding’s Ovid’s Metam. B. iii.Sir Arthur Golding in his “worke very pleasant and delectable,” were demi-wolves, and “gaunt as any grewnd,” I cannot take on myself to decide; but it is a fair inference, from the evidence adduced, that lupi-canine crosses predominated, in all their ferocity, in the kennels of Arcadia—not indeed to the exclusion of canine indigenæ of pure blood, but enough to give a ferine character to the general type.⁠[348]

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The Hyrcanian, savage as he was, is reported to have increased his natural ferocity by engendering with the tiger:

And to the subsequent generations of this cross Bargæus gives speed in pursuit, and courage in attack:

The breed of Hyrcania, having escaped the notice of Aristotle and his copyist Pliny, is of course omitted by Solinus, (whose work entitled The Governour. B. i. c. xi.Polyhistor, however “mervaylous delectable” in the opinion of Sir Thomas Elyot, is a mere breviary of the twice-told tales of the too credulous Aristot. Hist. Animal. L. viii. c. 28.Roman naturalist,) but the same fabulous union with the tiger is recorded by them as the parent stock of the Indian dog. May not the Indian and Hyrcanian, though separated 235by Athenæus and Pollux, have been deemed identical by the Deipnosoph. L. v. c. 8.Stagirite?⁠[349]—To the tiger-cross of Irak, the compound epithet λεοντομιγεῖς is applied by the learned grammarianPollucis Onomast. L. v. c. v. 39. just cited, as if the “fera semina” of the first connexion were leonine. The ferocity of the breed, contrasted with the timidity of the stag, affords an argument to Lucretius against the Pythagorean doctrine of a promiscuous transmigration of souls:

By the archbishop of Thessalonica the Canes Hyrcani are mentioned amongst the ἐπίσημα κυνῶν γένη of his commentary on Homer (ad Iliad. ρʹ.) but they are not found in either of the poems; nor, indeed, do I remember in the Iliad or Odyssey any dogs distinctively marked by their geographical appellations.

The plaintive wailing of the old nurse, Carmé, over her daughter, the nymph Britomartis,

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in one of Virgil’s minor poems, amended by Heyne, refers very pathetically to the companionship of the Hyrcanian dog in the mountainous chase—

though associates from a Cretan kennel would have been more in place—

The Locrian dog, much esteemed by Grecian sportsmen, is particularly employed by Xenophon in the boar-chase; but I know not to which of the territories called Locris he should be appropriated, nor whether common to all. Nor do I find in him properties sufficiently characteristic of the family of bellicosi to place him here with confidence—and yet I no where see him used in pursuit of timid fugacious quarry.⁠[350] Oppian (no authority for classification) introduces him between the Egyptian and Molossian—here then let him stand—Oppian. Cyneg. L. i. 374.βουκολίων οὖροι, Λοκροὶ χαροποί τε Μολοσσοί. The following beautiful little epitaph of Anyta is admitted, merely because its subject, the fleetest of musical hounds, bears the name of Locris—

for I am by no means convinced that the title is any thing more than an individual appellative (unconnected with locality) bestowed 237by a Grecian lady, perhaps, on a valued pet. Darcius of Venusium places the Locrian with the Arcadian, and others of the pugnacious class.

The Carthaginian poet alone has commemorated the “acres catuli” of Libya, his native country,

and from him probably, Fracastorius (a learned physician of Verona, who wrote a short poem of some merit, “de curâ canum,” eleven centuries later,) may have derived the Canes Libyci of his Alcon, recommended for the savage chase.

It cannot be granted to Conrad Gesner that the Libyan of the African poet is the Metagon of Gratius; nor is the resemblance between the former and the Egyptian of Oppian sufficiently clear to justify an inference of identity. Indeed our materials for forming a judgment are far too scanty. We know no more of the “Incola arundiferi Nili”De Venatione L. i. of Natalis Comes than we cull from the credulous historians of the Egyptian dog, Ælian and Solinus, relative to his fear of crocodiles. The former naturalist reports Ælian. de Nat. Animal. L. vi. c. 53.οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες καὶ ἑλεῖν, καὶ ἀνιχνεῦσαι τὰ θηρία σοφοί· οἱ δὲ Αἰγύπτιοι φυγεῖν δεινότατοι, κ. τ. λ. Polyhistor. c. xv.“E Nilo nunquam nisi currentes lambitant, dum à crocodilis insidias cavent,” adds the author of the Polyhistor.

The Pannonian breed of Canes bellicosi, of high courage, were employed in actual war, as well as its mimicry the chase. Παίονες stand at the head of Oppian’s long catalogue, and, upon 238his principle of omnifarious commixture, are recommended to be crossed with sagacious Cretans—

The Veronese poet makes a twofold distinction of the dogs of Pannonia in his cynegetical effusion, entitled Alcon. In the first class, he places the Pannonii truces, as already cited, adapted for the chase of fierce prey; in the second, Pannonii agiles, for timid, innoxious quarry:

The Pannonii truces are noticed by Julius Pollux, and also their consimilars of Magnesia—both evidently of the Epirote breed. The former are also mentioned by Nemesian, Cyneg. v. 126.

Ælian characterizes the Magnesian war-hounds as φοβεροί τε, καὶ ἄγριοι, καὶ ἐντυχεῖν ἀμείλικτοι; and states that the horsemen of Magnesia,⁠[351] in the Ephesian war, were each accompanied to the field with a Canis Venaticus, the dogs collectively first assaulting the enemy, backed by the pedestrian soldiers, and lastly by the cavalry; who did not charge till the canine warriors Ælian. Var. Hist. L. xiv. c. 46.προπηδῶντες ἐτάραττον τὴν παρεμβολήν. The Μάγνητες are merely named by the poet of Anazarbus, in his first Cynegetic, vs. 372.

Of all the pugnacious dogs of the classic file, the most renowned were those bred on the continent of Epirus, and denominated, from 239one of its principal districts, Molossian: of which Aristotle records two varieties, the one for ordinary hunting, the other for guarding flocks, houses, and property. The fabled origin of the breed is consistent with its high repute in the kennels of antiquity. For, on the authority of Nicander, we are told by Onomast. L. v. 39.Julius Pollux, that the Epirote was descended from the brazen dog, which Vulcan wrought for Jupiter, and animated with all the functions of canine life—

Of this Molossian prototype the fortunate proprietors were, successively, Europa, Minos, Procris, and Cephalus; and, somehow or other, as he passed from kennel to kennel, amidst heroines and heroes, or whilst in the temporary keeping of Diana, (who seemingly bestowed him on Procris,) he was metamorphosed into a wolf-greyhound, under the name and character of the Ovidian Lælaps. See Class iii. Vertragus.

The prowess of the Canes Molossi rendered them most useful auxiliaries in the field of battle;⁠[352] and they were equally prized in the contests of the circus and amphitheatre. Their war praises are sung by the classic muse of Darcius, in a style worthy the purest age of Roman literature, nor are their other merits forgotten by this accomplished poet:

But our citations must be made from writers of an earlier date, and the character of these dogs derived from coeval, or at least original, sources. The attachment and fidelity of Epirotes to their masters formed a remarkable feature of their tribe—so much so, that Statius tells us the soldiers of Molossia wept over their faithful canine companions, slain in war:

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—a manifestation of kindly and affectionate feeling, of which their congeners of an earlier date, on the authority of Tryphiodorus, were totally unworthy:

In the capacity of dogs of war, they do not fall under my plan; nor indeed as οἰκουροὶ, nor as fighters in the Venatio of the amphitheatre, do they strictly come within this arrangement. On these points of their character the reader will find illustrative anecdotes in Julius Pollux, Pliny, and Solinus.

As dogs of the chase, their strength, size, and undaunted courage, enabled them to contend with the most terrific wild animals;⁠[353] and we are assured that the lion himself has been mastered by the dog of Epirus—the tiger, pard, panther, and boar, have yielded to him. The epithets applied to the Canis Molossus all indicate his fire and resolution. De Nat. Anim. L. iii. c. ii.Ælian calls him θυμικώτατος; Virgil, “acremque Molossum,” (Georg. iii.); and Seneca uses the same epithet, “teneant acres lora Molossos,” (Hippolyt. Act i.) But there is much difference of opinion whether he was an open or close hound, when employed in the field.⁠[354] To the latter conclusion I am induced to accede from the following passage of Statius,

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On the trail of his game I believe him to have been a mute limier or limehound, (whence Venationis Aprugnæ Leges. L. i.Savary’s term echemythus,) and never to have opened until the quarry had started from its lair—being even at that time less noisy in his bark than the purely sagacious breeds. His silence or closeness is clearly indicated by Gratius, where he orders the yelping Etolian dam to be crossed with a Molossian sire,

Will not the praises of Lydia, of Martial’s well-known epitaph, place her among the savage inmates of a Molossian kennel?

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—her education and her quarry will, at least, assign her to the muster-roll of our first class.

But of the Canis Molossus Venaticus, enough;—matchless as he was for stoutness, before Britain was discovered and its race of Canes bellicosi brought into competition with those of Epirus, he at last was compelled to yield the palm of ferocious hardihood to the British bull-dog, and to succumb to his superior prowess:

The second variety of the Epirote noticed by Aristotle, though out of the pale of this epitome, is worth recording from its classical associations, and because it possesses in an eminent degree the canine qualities lauded by Luciani Fugitivi.Lucian, τὸ φυλακτικὸν, τὸ οἰκουρικὸν, καὶ τὸ φιλοδέσποτον—the De Naturâ Deor. L. ii. 63.“tam fida custodia, tamque amans dominorum adulatio, tantumque odium in externos” of Cicero. To this I give the name of Canis Molossus Villaticus, and include under the title the οἰκουρὸς, οἰκοφύλαξ, πυλαωρὸς, τραπεζεὺς, ostiarius, pastoralis, pecuarius, &c.; names derived from the different uses to which the dog was applied. Let the Villæ Custos of Columella be our type:—De Re Rust. L. viii. c. 12.“amplissimi corporis, vasti latratûs canorique, ut prius auditu maleficum, deinde etiam aspectu terreat, et tamen nonnunquam, ne visus quidem, horribili fremitu suo fuget insidiantem,⁠[355] &c.”—Here we place the sharp-toothed watch-dog of Hesiod’s agricultural injunctions;

—here, the “canes rabidos et immanes, et quibusvis lupis et ursis sæviores, quos ad tutelæ præsidia curiosè coloni fuerant alumnati,” 243of Apuleius;—here, the pastoral dogs of Varro (Geopon. L. xix. c. i.) Fronto (Geopon. L. xix. c. ii.) and Varro (De Re R. L. ii. c. ix.);⁠[356]—and here too those, in general, of the poet of Syracuse, the canine guards of flocks and herds, so prettily alluded to, in the instance of Lampurus, by the goat-herd boy of the eighth Idyllium,

and the milk-fattened ban-dog of Claudian,

The notices in Homer of these dogs are numerous; (see Iliad. κʹ. 183. μ′. 302. ρʹ. 109.) and their watchfulness, as nightly centinels, is sung in classic hexameters by the poet of Venusium:

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Pitiscus tells us, on the authority of Eustathius, that it was customary with the ancients to have porter-dogs⁠[357]—“moris erat atriensibus fores servari à canibus,”—such were the πυλαώροι and τραπεζῆες of Homer, the attendants at the door of Telemachus, κύνες πόδας ἀργοὶ, (Odyss. υʹ. 144.)—the house-dogs of Patroclus, nine in number—of whom two were slain, and offered on his funeral pile, (Iliad. ψʹ. 173.) and the κύνες ὠμησταὶ of Priam—whose anticipated reckless laceration of his dead body—πολίον τε κάρη, πολιόν τε γένειον—by the πυλαώροι, is pleaded by the aged king to deter his ill-fated son from contending with Achilles. (Iliad. χʹ. 69.)—Such too were the gemini custodes of Evander, which followed their rustic king to the dormitory of his Trojan guest. (Æneid. L. viii. 461.)⁠[358]

As an attribute of the porter-dogs, speed was utterly unnecessary, though given to those of Telemachus, above cited: and that they generally possessed it not is implied, I think, in the question of Ulysses to Eumæus, as to the character of the “unhoused, neglected” Argus;

Ulysses Aldrovandus, Spelman, and Ducange, have left us the many titles of the watch-dogs of the classic and middle ages, in their respective works. See Aldrovand. de Quad. Digit. Vivip. L. ii. 245Canis Epitheta; and the Glossaria of Spelman and Ducange. The title οἰκοφύλαξ, derived from the office of the animal,

occurs in a pretty epigram of the Locrian poetess on the picture of a Grecian lady; but is there probably applied to a domestic pet,

To the “hylax in limine” of Virgil (Ecl. viii.)—the “vigilum canum tristes excubiæ” of Horace (L. iii. Od. 16.)—I need not refer; nor indeed to the Catenarius of Seneca (de Irâ, L. iii.), nor the δέσμιος of Artemidorus (Oneirocrit. L. ii. c. xi.) To say that all these passages afford instances of Molossian Canes custodes, would be going too far. They merely exemplify the use to which trusty, vigilant individuals of the pugnacious canine race were applied, and the functions they performed, in the rural and domestic economy of Greek and Roman households. Satir. L. ii. S. vi. vs. 114.Horace, however, particularly specifies Epirotes in the capacity of house-dogs—“domus alta Molossis Personuit canibus”—as if they were the usual custodes of patrician houses. For much of the point of his pretty fable rests on the sumptuousness of the town-house, wherein dwelt the city-mouse, joint-tenant with a biped lord, “in locuplete domo,” the appointed place of rendezvous for the rustic friend.

To the same tribe, for want of a more appropriate one, (unless the reader would place them on a Libyan or Egyptian file,) I assign the “exquisitior custodia” of Massinissa, the canine guardians in whose protection he deemed himself more safe than in that of his fellow-men;

“Parum fidei in pectoribus hominum reponens,” says Valerius Maximus, “salutem suam custodiâ canum vallavit.”⁠[359]

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But we are going beyond our prescribed bounds, and must return to our text-book, the Cynegeticon of the Faliscian; who next introduces to notice the Canes bellicosi of the British isles, a parent stock of native growth. We have no information of any source from whence these could have been imported into Britain, and, as Strabo states that they were exported from thence into Gaul, it is inferred that they were indigenæ. Whether the De Quad. Digit. Vivip. L. iii. c. viii.Canis bellicosus Anglicus of Aldrovandus, or the Canis Mastivus, omnium maximus, animosus et pugnax of Ray, be alluded to in the following lines of Hist. Animal.Gratius, is doubtful. Possibly the poet may include both breeds, as the animal combats of the Roman amphitheatre were supplied by the Procurator Cynegii with the finest specimens of our war-dogs, without reference to minute distinctions;

Their hardihood in seizing the bull is celebrated by Claudian in the well-known verse,

In the early authentic record of the Canes Venatici of Britain by the royal sportsman, Edmund de Langley, three sub-varieties of our Canis bellicosus are enrolled, in addition to the mastiff:

“Alaunt is a maner and natre of houndes and the good Alauntz ben the which men clepyn Alauntz gentil. Other there byn that men clepyn Alauntz ventreres. Other byn Alauntz of the bocherie.⁠[360]

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“Thei that ben gentile shuld be made and shape as a greyhounde evyñ of alle thinges sauf of the heved, the whiche shuld be greet and short,” &c. Mayster of Game. c. xvi. fol. 67^b.“Commonly Alauntz byn stordy of here owyn nature and have not so good witte as many other houndes have. For if a man prik an hors the Alaunt wil gladly renne and bite the hors. Also thei renne at oxen and at sheep at swyne and to alle othere beestis or to men or to othere houndes for men hav seyn Alauntz sle her maystir, and in alle maner wise Alauntz byn inly fell and evel undirstondyng and more foolish and more sturdy than eny other maner of houndes,” &c.

“That other nature of Alauntz is clepid ventreres, almost thei bene shapon as a greyhounde of ful shap, thei hav grete hedes and greet lippes and greet eeris. And with such men helpeth hem at the baityng of a boole and atte huntynge of a wilde boor. Thei holde fast of here nature but thei byn hevy and foule and ben slayn with wilde boor or with the bulle and it is nat ful grete losse,” &c.

“The Alauntz of the bocherie is soch as ye may alle day see in good tounes that byn called greet bochers houndis,” &c.—“Thei byn good for the baytyng of the bulle and huntyng of the wilde boore whedir it be w^t. greihoundis at the tryste or w^t. rennyng houndis at abbay with inne the coverte,” &c.

The first and second of the above sub-varieties appear to have had some commixture of Celtic blood in their veins—indeed the name of Ventreres receives a ready solution in the Latin term Ventraha, by which the greyhound is designated, according to Barthius, in an 248ancient MS. of Gratius, where the more usual reading is Vertraha—(Veltracha.)

Viewing the “canes gravioribus aptæ morsibus” of Britain to contain only two principal indigenous sub-varieties, the bull-dog may be adduced as an animal of the most ferociously brutal aspect, and most invincible courage in the creation.⁠[361] The mastiff surpasses his congener as much in size, as he is inferior to him in ferocity.⁠[362] See Caius de Canibus Britannicis.

To these truculent dogs, εὐφυεῖς πρὸς κυνηγεσίας, according to Strabo (L. iv.), as well as resolute in war, our rude ancestors were beholden for the destruction or expulsion of beasts of prey from these 249islands. The wolf and the wild boar yielded to their prowess;⁠[363] and they are thence sometimes called Canes luporarii in ancient tenures.

Having mentioned the bellicosi of Molossia and Britain in verses already cited, Gratius compares others to them in the sequel;

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These were perhaps very cunning and savage varieties of the dog of Laconia, and classed in consequence by the poet with the family of pugnaces; though more properly belonging to that of nare sagaces. The words of Gratius are of doubtful signification, and the passage may be corrupt. Wase’s Illustrations of Gratius.He either means, as the British dogs excel in courage, so do the Athamanian in cunning—which is his usual antithetical mode of stating opposite qualities—or else, as the British dogs surpass the Molossian in stoutness, so they equal the Athamanian, Thessalian, and Epirote in subtlety. This interpretation accords with the known properties of the British bull-dog. It is singular that dogs of two districts, Acarnania and Etolia, adjoining each other, and only separated by the river Achelous, should have been of such opposite qualities—the former so mute, the latter, in the sportsman’s phrase, so open.

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CANES SAGACES.

The multitudinous varieties of this class have one common quality, by which they are united in the same family, and which Gratius terms “venandi sagax virtus,” diversified in its phenomena, and operative under great dissimilarity of external shape.⁠[367]

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Of the larger and more powerful varieties the type is given by Xenophon in the third and fourth chapters of his Cynegeticus, and by Julius Pollux in the fifth book of his Onomasticon:—that of the smaller and more nimble sorts will be found hereafter in the examples of the Canis Petronius of Gratius, and the Canis Agassæus of Oppian. The names of the hounds, principally derived from the countries of which they were supposed to be indigenous, have been already enumerated. Their mode of hunting is faithfully struck off by the Latin poet of the Halieutica, a fragment of disputed authorship, heretofore attributed to Ovid, but latterly to Gratius:

In our descriptions of the pugnacious class, we followed, where able, the order of the Faliscian’s Cynegeticon,—filling up lacunæ, when apparent, from extraneous sources; but, in the present class, we have no such text-book by which to regulate our progress, and must be beholden to the Greek and Latin Cynegetica, collectively, for an arrangement of the individuals of this class in such sequence, as the scale of their importance in the kennels of antiquity may seem to justify. And first, and foremost, we place the well-known hound of Lacedæmon.

The Spartan dog, in its two varieties of Castorian and Foxite, was employed by Xenophon for the common purposes of hunting.⁠[368] The Καστόριαι were so called Pollucis Onomast. L. v. c. v. 39.ὅτι Κάστωρ ἡσθεὶς τῷ ἔργῳ μάλιστα αὐτὰς διεφύλαξεν; or, in the words of the Onomasticon, because they were Κάστορος θρέμματα, Ἀπόλλωνος τὸ δῶρον.

The ἀλωπεκίδες had their name διότι ἐκ κυνῶν καὶ ἀλωπέκων ἐγένοντο;252 Castor, according to Nicander, having united the dog to the fox, and produced a hybrid sort of sporting hound of great repute.

But as if Castor and Pollux, being twin brothers, born ὠδῖνι μιῇ, (Apollon. L. i.) possessed a common identity, the honour of having first initiated the canine race in the pursuit of game, is indifferently awarded to both. Oppian, we have already seen, bestows it on Pollux, and Xenophon on Castor—“ovo prognatus eodem.” Aristotle considers all the Canes Laconici to be of the sort called ἀλωπεκίδες—not that they were all sprung from the fox and dog, but were fox-like in appearance:—and on the same authority, we hold that the bitches of a Spartan kennel were superior to the dogs—Hist. Animal. L. ix. c. i.Λάκαιναι κύνες αἱ θήλειαι εὐφυέστεραι τῶν ἀῤῥένων εἰσί.

Although the eloquent compiler of the Cynegeticus distinguishes his harriers, as above stated, into Castorian and Foxite hounds, he notes no characteristic peculiarities in either: but Themistius, the Paphlagonian philosopher, induces us to believe that each possessed the distinctive features of a particular family—Oratio xxvii.ἕτερον μὲν κάλλος καστορίδων κύνων, ἕτερον δὲ ἀλωπεκίδων. Vlitius’s fanciful emendation of the text of the Onomasticon has led him into an error, and produced the monstrous birth of a third variety, which he ascribes to Julius Pollux, called ἀλωπεκικαστόρες; but which that learned man’s work will not admit.

Of the whole Spartan tribe the swiftest, perhaps, were the κυνοσουρίδες of Callimachus—deriving their name from Cynosura of Laconia—

They were the gift of the Arcadian God Pan to Diana, and possessed sagacity of nose equal to their speed of foot:⁠[369]

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—and near a-kin to them, we may suppose, if not of the same blood, were the brace presented by the worshipful Agrotera to her much-favoured Cyrene:

But of fable, enough—The Spartan’s shape, qualities, and style of hunting, singly and in pack, are fully described by Xenophon in the third, fourth, and sixth chapters of his Manual. The quarry is here that of which the Athenian was most enamoured, viz. the hare,—with which the woods and parks of his Scilluntian retreat abounded. But for the boar-chase the hound of Lacedæmon is also employed. To the Indian, Cretan, and Locrian dogs,Xenophon de Venat. c. x. the sportsman, who would successfully combat the savage boar, must add the choicest individuals of the Spartan kennel. And in this chase, he will find one of the latter hounds most useful as a limier,⁠[370] to follow up the trail to the boar’s couch in silence, and then, with the rest of the pack, to bay the started quarry:

Julius Pollux, on the authority of Nicander, has transmitted to us subordinate varieties of the Spartan, entitled Menelaides from Menelaus, Harmodii from Harmodius, and others from other persons, and places of inferior note. Virgil applies the epithets Taygetan to the 254race, from the “juga longa Taygeti” which traverse Laconia, a favourite resort of the Sylvan Goddess:

and Amyclean, from the birth-place of Castor and Pollux:

a local epithet also found in a supposed fragment of Pindar, cited by Plutarch, Quæst. Conviv. ix. 15. 748. and admitted amongst the Fragmenta ex Hyporchematibus. Vol. ii. of Heyne’s edition. (Oxon. 1807.)

But a few words, before we proceed farther, on the lineage of the ἀλωπεκίδες.

Modern naturalists, with the exception of Mons. Desmoulins, are pretty generally agreed that the Canis aureus is the real origin of the domestic dog. And if so, being a native of Asia Minor, and of a dirty fulvous colour, may we not suppose him to have been the cross, from which the foxite hounds of Xenophon were bred? The latter had more or less of a ferine aspect, and fulvous colour, softened down by the admixture of hair of a different hue about the muzzle. Still tawny was the predominant colour—“fulvus Lacon,” (Hor.)

Mr. Hunter denies the existence of a genuine foxite, as the dog and fox are of different species, and will not produce together. Guldenstadt allows the jackal may be the Thos of Aristotle. May he not also be the Thos of Gratius, and “Cat o’ mountaine”⁠[371] of his translator? May not Hagnon’s pack,⁠[372]

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derived from a Thoan cross, and other such semiferous commixtures, be founded in fact?

May not these possible tales have given currency and belief to the supposed, impossible, fictitious, engendering of the fox and dog, and the breed of semi-wild ἀλωπεκίδες?—Aristotle says roundly, when animals resemble each other in size, outward character, and time of gestation, they may breed together; and that it positively happens with the dog, fox, and wolf—οἱ δὲ θῶες, says the Stagirite also, ὁμοίως κυΐσκονται τοῖς κυσὶ, καὶ τίκτουσι τυφλὰ, κ. τ. λ.—and therefore, by his own canons, may engender with dogs. Galen, Hesychius, and Gesner, seem to allow the possibility of vulpi-canine issue: Caius accounts for such a birth by the “pruriens libido” of the parties concerned:⁠[373] even Blumenbach and Desmoulins, on the authority of others, have given credency to it. Pennant’s Quadrupeds.Pennant reports a case of prolific engendering of the fox and dog, on the word of an Oxfordshire woodman; and Daniel’s Field-Sports. Vol. i. p. 12.Daniel cites a second in London. Hunter, who assumed nothing in natural history of doubtful character as fact, till he had put it to the test, denies this cross, à priori, not from actual experiment; for he did not live to make the trial. The former crosses he fully established: see Phil. Trans. Vol. 77.

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May not Ovid be supposed to allude to the cross of the Thos and dog, and to exemplify it in the individual of Actæon’s pack whom he calls Thous?

The fanciful origin of Oppian’s Thos from the wolf and panther, ὅθεν κρατερόφρονα φῦλα, baffles all elucidation.

Let the ἀλωπεκίδες, then, be considered as possible hybrids, the produce of authenticated crosses.⁠[374] The wolf, jackal, and dog, all differ but little. “The dog himself,” says Philosoph. Transactions. Vol. 77.Mr. Hunter, 257“may be the wolf tamed, and the jackal may probably be the dog returned to his wild state.”

All animals having been originally wild, the more a specific class may differ from its prototype in appearance, the further it is removed in consequence of variation arising from cultivation. Where dogs have been least cultivated, they still retain most of their original character, or similarity to the wolf, or jackal, both in shape and disposition. Thus the shepherd’s dog, all over the world, has strongly the character of these wild animals—and so I have no doubt had the dog of Laconia.

The wild dogs of modern travellers, as found in Congo, Lower Æthiopia, and towards the Cape of Good Hope, somewhat resemble the Spartan type. They are stated to be “greyhound-like in shape, red-haired, with upright ears, rough tails, and extremely fierce.” The Dingo of Australasia, and Dhole of the East Indies, look very like ἀλωπεκίδες. The North and South-American half-reclaimed varieties have the elongated jaws of the semi-barbarous breeds, and tend to prove from their general shape, their character of countenance, their quick manner, and pricked and erect ears, identity of species in the dog, wolf, and jackal.

But on this subject enough:—let us now return within the pale of the kennel of Lacedæmon. The true Spartan dogs of the olden time were strong, swift, and courageous; and barked on scent of their game. We know that they were strong, on the authority of Ovid’s “prævalidusque Lacon;” and swift, from Virgil calling them “Veloces Spartæ catulos,” and Pindar alluding to the same excellence in the fragment beginning

Still their speed, like that of the Etolian of Gratius, was of a qualified character, and very much below the Vertragus.

Their strength and courage recommended them to shepherds and herdsmen, as guardians of their flocks—the goatherd Lacon’s dog, from his venatico-pastoral cast, being probably, of this variety.

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Virgil enjoins feeding the Spartan and Molossian on fattening whey, for the safe custody of cattle;

and briefly runs through the ordinary chases in which the canine tribe generally are used;

The trailing quality of the Spartan, and keenness of scent,⁠[375] Plato refers to, in his Parmenides—ὥσπεργε αἱ Λάκαιναι σκύλακες μεταθεὶς καὶ ἰχνεύεις τὰ λεχθέντα, (Zeno Socrati)—and Sophocles in the prologue of the Ajax Flagellifer, where the wily son of Laertes, tracking the murderous maniac, Αἴαντι τῷ σακεσφόρῳ, is likened to a sharp-nosed Spartan hound,

Homer’s kindly and vivid description of the hunting excellencies of the faithful Argus, his keenness of sight and smell, and speed of foot, would lead us to place him amongst the swiftest of the sagacious class: and where can we assign him a more honourable station than in a Spartan kennel?—I am aware some ancient Greek writer (to whom I have lost my clue of reference) considers this far-famed hound an isolated variety of no particular family—ὅμως ἡ φύσις καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις καὶ ἅπασι τόποις διασπείρει κύνας ἀγαθοὺς, ὁποῖός τις καὶ ὁ259 Ἄργος—not reducible within the pale of a general classification founded on geographical distribution; but he has evidently all the characteristic qualities of a genuine Spartan, and I never heard of any breed peculiar to Ithaca.

The answer of Eumæus, in which he fondly dilates on the prowess of the old dog in the better days of his youth, throws farther light on his supposed connexion with a Spartan kennel:

—evidently showing that he ran on sight of his game as well as scent: for the common reading ἴδοιτο is preferable to the δίοιτο of Eustathius, and is followed by Pope in his inimitable translation:

A Spartan huntsman might value such omnifarious qualifications; but we cannot allow such a hound, εἰ δὴ καὶ ταχὺς ἔσκε θέειν, within the precincts of a coursing kennel, where speed and keen-sightedness are essential properties, according to the modern canons of the leash; but to stoop to “the tainted green” with the sagacity of a harrier, 260or even of a Caledonian deer-hound, of which Argus has been deemed a prototype, invalidates the claim to εὐγένεια in the breed.⁠[376]

Diana having been particularly worshipped in Crete,⁠[377]

we naturally look for a race of dogs deriving a local name from her favourite isle. And, accordingly, connected with the last-mentioned tribe of Canes Venatici, we have the Cretan and Carian, powerful, quick-scented, nimble hounds; whom it would be wrong unnaturally to dissever, as having no marked physical peculiarities. Indeed from their parity of character, and supposed identity of origin, the hounds of Crete, and its neighbouring continent of Caria, have generally been united in one family.

Ælian describes the κύων Κρῆσσα κούφη, καὶ ἁλτικὴ, καὶ ὀρειβασίαις σύντροφος. By Seneca the Cretans are called pugnacious—“pugnaces Cressæ;” and by Claudian, wire-haired—“Hirsutæque fremunt Cressæ.” Arrian, when speaking of the Segusian hounds of261 Celtica, their unsightly aspect, their noisy howl, and extraordinary sagacity of nose, indirectly proves the speed and keen-scentedness of the Carian and Cretan. Oppian enjoins the hound of Crete to be crossed with that of Pannonia, and the Carian, as if different, with the Thracian,

but, it is probable, the Pannonian and Thracian resembled each other as much as the Cretan and Carian.

Two sub-varieties are recorded by Julius Pollux under the titles of διάπονοι and πάριπποι:—the former so called from their bustling, indefatigable character—Pollucis Onomast. L. v. c. v.τὰς νύκτας ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τὰ θηρία μάχαις ἐπιλαμβάνειν, καὶ πολλάκις παρευνασθέντας τοῖς θηρίοις μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἄρχεσθαι τῆς μάχης; the latter, from their running at the horse’s side—τοῖς ἵπποις συνθέουσιν οὔτε προθέοντες οὔτε μὴν ἀπολειπόμενοι.

To these the courser of Nicomedia adds a third sub-variety, seemingly produced by the union of the former two—Arriani de Venat. c. iii. αἱ διάπονοι ἀπὸ τοῦ φιλοπονεῖν, καὶ αἱ ἰταμαὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀξέως, καὶ αἱ μικταὶ ἀπ’ ἀμφοῖν; the ἰταμαὶ probably answering to the πάριπποι of the philologist. On the authority of Ejusdem c. ii.Arrian, we conclude the Cretan and Carian modes of hunting to have been the same as generally practised in Greece—such as are described at large by the elder Xenophon in his Cynegeticus. See Meursii Opera, Tom. iii. c. vii. Creta.

Though not used by the elder Xenophon in the common hare-chase, the Cretans are recommended for boar-hunting, and were sometimes employed in pursuit of deer.

How beautifully is their style of hunting described by the poet Varius, “Mæonii carminis ales,” in the fragment preserved by Macrobius!

Varius apud Macrob. L. vi. c. ii.

—affording the Cilician copyist one of a profusion of highly poetical similes, with which he depicts the polypus, or preke, searching for its beloved olive-tree:

In connexion with the kindred Spartans, the Cretans are briefly mentioned by See Wernsdorf in loco.Gratius,—an allusion being, probably, intended to an intermixture of the two allied breeds in order to produce the Metagon,⁠[378] whose praises are subsequently sung:

Ovid specifies them by name in Actæon’s blood-thirsty pack,

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and subsequently a litter,

as sings Sir Arthur Golding:

Indeed almost all the Ovidian pack were of Cretan, Spartan, and Arcadian blood, well chosen by the poet for the fabled chase of the son of Autonoë,⁠[379] “falsi sub imagine cervi”—⁠[380]

The whole of the Spartan family, inclusive of the Cretan and Carian, appear to have barked, as I have already observed, on scent of their game⁠[381]—a quality reprobated by Gratius (malignum officium!) when shown before the quarry was started from his lair.

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The noisy bark of the Etolian breed Gratius contrasts with the mute cunning of its neighbour of Acarnania, already considered in the first class:⁠[382]

Too much addicted to gladdening, when near the lair of his game, 265the Etolian is not admitted into the class of Canes Bellicosi, whose general character was closeness till the game was started; at which time a cry, however loud, was not objected to by classic huntsmen,—but the dog, that roused the game by giving tongue beforehand, was strongly reprobated. Such was the faulty dog of Calydon, who needed all his other better qualities to counterbalance this latrant propensity. That he had some valuable properties Gratius allows, and recommends them to be turned to account by judicious commixture with the mute Molossian’s blood:

In consequence of the common Canes Venatici giving tongue or opening, before the game was roused, it was customary with classic sportsmen to employ Inductores, mute finders, “canes tacitæ,” (Senecæ Hippolyt.,) to search out the quarry by the trail;⁠[384]

These are the Metagontes of the Faliscian poet—so called from “drawing after their game”—μετάγοντες:

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Steadiness and a close mouth are essential attributes of the limehound tribe.⁠[385] Gratius, Lucan, Seneca, Ælian, and others, insist on silence. And Oppian, seemingly forgetful of this negative quality in the Armenian bear-hound, (whom I consider a limehound,) inculcates closeness in sagacious dogs, generally, from their very puppyhood;

They are to be taught it with their names, and other matters of kennel discipline.

The limiers of classical antiquity, more numerous perhaps than the reader may suppose, are found widely distributed. We gather traces of them in Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Pliny, Gratius, Ælian, Seneca, Nemesian, Oppian, Silius Italicus, and others. The Belgic hound of the poet of the Second Punic War is certainly an inductor or limier:

And it strikes me, that the Gelonian and Umbrian of Gratius, the Tuscan of Nemesian, and the Armenian bear-hound of Oppian, are all varieties of limehound. Of the Metagon, already mentioned, there can be no doubt—he is clearly of the class described by the Greek poet of the Halieutics:

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The Homeric inductors occur in the boar-hunt of Mount Parnassus, in the van of which Ulysses, οὐτάμεναι μεμαὼς, distinguishes himself, with the sons of Autolycus:

and the abstract phraseology of Lucretius affords a second early notice of them:

The first limehound in the annals of sporting was Glympicus, tutored in the art of harbouring by the Bœotian Hagnon, a huntsman immortalized by Gratius:

We here see the limier’s style of harbouring portrayed to the life—falling on the trail—coming to a fault—recovering the scent—and following it up to the lair. The harbourer of more modern days is the inquisitor of Hist. Nat. L. viii. c. xl.Pliny’s short sketch; “Scrutatur vestigia atque persequitur, comitantem ad feram inquisitorem loro trahens: quâ visâ quàm silens et occulta, quàm significans demonstratio est!” But of all descriptions in the range of classical literature the most exquisitively beautiful is Ælian’s—no painter can surpass this graphic hunting-piece:De Naturâ Animalium L. viii. c. ii.—προηγεῖται τοῦ κυνηγέτου (ὁ κύων ὁ θηρατικὸς) ἱμάντι μακρῷ προσημμένος, καὶ ῥινηλατεῖ, τῆς φωνῆς ἔχων ἐγκρατῶς καἰ σιωπῶν, κ. τ. λ. The hound’s busy manner,—his steady search, even where there is no game,—his burst of silent joy at catching a scent,—his salutation of the harbourer as if sympathizing in his glee at being successful,—his drawing on up to the boar’s couch,—the start—and final pæan of exultation and victory, are all described in masterly style.

The Gelonian breed is very cursorily mentioned by Gratius, as timid and sagacious;

and is recommended to be crossed with the tigrine Hyrcanian; whence spiritless Gelonian bitches have derived that courage and pluck, of which they stood in need:

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The Umbrian had much of the Gelonian character—timorous and soft—but remarkably keen of nose. Wishing to incorporate every good quality in the same mongrel breed, Gratius ejaculates—

Silius Italicus notes the sagacity of the Umber, and seems to indicate his closeness of mouth in the contrasted barking of the Spartan,

But his habits are most vividly sketched in an elegant simile of Seneca’s Thyestes, where Atreus, exulting in his artful entrapping of his brother, (as a wild beast enveloped in the hunter’s toils—plagis.....clusa dispositis fera,—) exclaims in a strain of ill-dissembled self-gratulation,

The Virgilian Umbrian, to which Æneas in pursuit of Turnus is 270likened in the last book of the Æneid, may be taken to signify any Canis venaticus, and not that of Umbria particularly:

The true Umbrian, I conceive, was mute—certainly so, until his game was on foot; as were all the other finders spoken of. But another reason against the dog of Maro being the native dog of Umbria is this—the poet would never have compared the brave and victorious Æneas to a notoriously timid animal, who “fugit adversos idem quos repperit hostes—” while the hero was dealing death and destruction on all sides of him;

If the character of the hounds of Umbria be such as stated, on the authority of the ancient Cynegetica, the epithet “audaces” bestowed on them by the Latin poet of Barga must be unmerited;

Barthius, erroneously in my opinion, identifies the Tuscan dogs of Nemesian with the fierce Molossian-like animals of Oppian’s first Cynegetic (vs. 413.). To the passage already cited under the Canes Bellicosi, the reader is referred, for the purpose of comparison with the following from the Carthaginian poet:

Oppian’s boar and lion-killers have very little resemblance to these 271indices of the form or seat of the timorous hare. The latter poet recommends the Tuscans (whom he is also supposed to designate under the title of Ausonians in his first kennel-roll) to be crossed with the Spartan race;

The Armenian bear-dog was a sort of lyemmer used by sportsmen of the East for tracking bears;⁠[388]

The poet concludes this part of his description with a singularly beautiful simile of a bare-footed little damsel in joyful search of mountain violets, (discovered by their grateful odour, and plucked for the decoration of her head,) with which she returns singing to the home of her peasant parents:

The δίκτυα and ἄρκυες, the δεῖμα πολύχροον of the feathered line, and the other instruments of the savage chase, combine to secure the ursine quarry. See Oppian. Cyneg. iv. vs. 354 ad vs. 424.

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Having already noticed the wary employment of the mute finder to search out the lair of animals obnoxious to the chase, let us look at the subsequent proceedings.⁠[389] When the nets and snares were set, the game found, and started by the Canes ductores, the attendants, it seems, slipped the latrant pack, which were held in couples at hand. That this was the ordinary routine is proved by Xenophon, Lucan, Seneca, and others. The Greek sportsman of Scillus does not, indeed, say that the dog first slipped should be mute, but merely quick-scented. Lucan, however, particularly states his quality of closeness in the lines of his Pharsalia, where he likens the naval tactics of Octavius, “Illyricæ custos Octavius undæ,” to the wily stratagems of a huntsman preparing for the attack of his game;

—and Seneca implies the same,

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Hitherto we have said nothing of the race of sagacious hunting-dogs, most commonly known by the name of hounds,⁠[391] the Petronius of Gratius,⁠[392] the Ἀγασσεὺς of Oppian, and the Segusian of Arrian.⁠[393] The Petronius belongs to the family of fleet sagacious hounds;

We here see the distinction between the harrier and greyhound, the former running on scent, the latter on sight.⁠[394] That the Petronii opened as soon as they hit upon the trail of their game, before it was roused, is much regretted by the poet—

Herein, however, they strikingly resemble their modern representatives; for, with Ducange, I readily grant that the Canes Petronii “ii sunt quos vulgò chiens courans appellamus.” Whoever has heard the din of the fox or hare-chase,

will grant that no Petronian pack could have been more noisy on the trail than their modern representatives.

The Britannus sagax, “the hound sagacious on the tainted green,” next claims our attention. Of the Britannus bellicosus we have already spoken under the first class. The earlier cynegetical writers are silent on the subject of British hounds: nor do they appear to have been known in Italy till towards the decline of the Roman empire; when, having been introduced into Celtic Gaul, their merits became gradually known in southern Europe. And here, in spite of the French Encyclopédie Méthodique: sur les Chasses, p. 138.encyclopedists, (the copyists of Messieurs D’Yauville and Le Verrier de la Conterie,) who gratuitously assume “qu’en général les chiens Anglois n’ont pas autant de noblesse que les beaux chiens François,”—and that where the breed is improved, as they allow it to be in some cases, the amelioration is attributable to Norman crosses,—we must, with our native poet, claim the palm for Britain;

By name, British hunting-dogs (as distinct from the pugnacious class) are mentioned by the poets of Carthage and Anazarbus alone; by the former, where singing the praises of different canine breeds, the merits of the blood of distant countries;

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—by the latter, in the conclusion of his first cynegetic, vs. 467, hereafter cited. Of Nemesian’s “veloces,” probably not of the sagacious class, I shall, in the sequel, speak. In the absence of any assigned habitat for the Petronius, may we not consider him indigenous of Britain?⁠[396] Our happy isle has ever been famous for excellent breeds of hunting-dogs, for skilful sportsmen, and horses both fleet and patient of the chase. All the Celtic nations indeed, and our ancestors among the rest, were passionately addicted to the diversions of the field, considering the prosecution of such laborious callings a kind of apprenticeship and initiation for war. Thence the superiority of the Celtic breeds of sporting-dogs, and more especially of the Britannus sagax and Britannus bellicosus. With the latter, perhaps, the former may have been sent to Italy by the resident Procurator Cynegii, as worthy of admission into Roman kennels; for at this early period I believe there were only these two native varieties of the canine race in Britain. In the field of battle, in public spectacles, and in the wolf and boar-chases, the bellicosus, the rival of the truculent Epirote, stood pre-eminent: and in the ordinary hunting of timid and fugacious quarry, the hound “naribus 277utilis,” acquired an early name and character.⁠[397] For hideousness of aspect, and ugliness of shape, both were remarkable;

—a notification of Ovid’s contemporary, which may be interpreted of the sagacious with as much truth as of the pugnacious sorts.

Modern ingenuity has taught British hounds of chase to pursue many varieties of prey. J. Caii de Canibus Britan. Libellus.“Alius leporis, alius vulpis, alius cervi, alius platycerotis, alius taxi, alius lutræ, alius mustelæ, alius cuniculi tantùm odore gaudet.” The dog does not himself necessarily differ, for adaptation to different game; and possibly, the old English Talbot was the parent stock, whence all the sub-varieties, at present found in the kennels of Great Britain, originally sprung,⁠[398] modified in shape and character by judicious breeding, and careful management as to quarry:⁠[399]

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The hounds of Theseus would be correctly placed, from the description of our great dramatic poet, under the old English breed. With it they have more points in common than with their fabled progenitors;

The vigorous and fleet Leverarius being a supposed representative of some ancient types, I cite the masterly picture of Somerville for the purpose of comparison with the classic poets of the Chase:

The Talbot, whose portrait is also sketched by the Latin poet of Barga,P. A. Bargæi Cyneg. v. as well as by the authors cited, is at present fallen into disrepute—his slowness of foot being scarce compensated by his keenness of scent. The fleeter Leverarius, whose consimilarity with the Gratian Petronius almost approaches to identity, was apparently unknown to M. A. Biondi; for he holds it quite impossible (like the elder Xenophon in regard to the fair capture of the hare with his De Canibus et Venatione Libellus.ἀλωπεκίδες at force) that any hounds should have speed sufficient to run down a fox, without the aid of wily instruments of destruction.⁠[400] But the largest varieties of Somerville’s last picture are found a match for the arch-felon, “vulpem captare dolosam,”—the only approach to the modern mode of pursuing whom, which the classics afford, is in the fourth book of Oppian’s Cynegetics, where the κύνες ἀολλέες are evidently a pack of hounds, though we look in vain for the well-mounted hunters;

In no case does he fall an easy prey to the disturbers of his cunningly-wrought latibulum:

Even when, with the din of huntsmen and hounds, driven into nets, the entangled felon, according to Martial, still fights it out, to the no little discomfiture and injury of his canine antagonists;

Identical with the least of the hound tribe of the British isles, the Canis venaticus minor of Ray’s Synopsis, and Charleton’s Onomasticon, is the Oppianic Agassæus; the derivation of whose name has 281puzzled Brodæus in Oppianum, p. 46.Broadæus and other classic commentators not a little.⁠[403] With the hint that Ἀγασσεὺς may be connected with Agassa of Macedonia, Agasus a port of Apulia, the Thracian Agessus, and Agathia a city of Phocis, no reason is alleged why a British dog should deduce his name from countries and places so remote. Of the existence of such a tiny hound of chase in this country, Rittershusius in Oppianum, p. 42.Rittershusius seems not to have been aware. British dogs, he remarks, are exceedingly keen-scented, but he cannot divine why called small, βαιὸν γένος, being, in his days at least, of great size. Brodæus, too, ignorant of any other than the Britannus of Claudian, cannot reconcile the “Anglici canes prodigiosæ staturæ” of this poet, and his own experience, with the portrait of the Oppianic Ἀγασσεύς.⁠[404]

It is scarce necessary to observe that the dog in question has no affinity with the Agasæus of Dr. Caius, who very absurdly borrows, for his gazehound, a name previously engaged by a totally different dog; as if to gratify his etymological mania by connecting the terms Agasæus, a gaze, a gazehound—“neque enim odoratu, sed prospectu attento et diligenti feram persequitur iste canis—(Agasæus, a gazehound)—etsi non sum nescius etiam apud Latinos Agasæi vocabulum inter canum nomina reperiri”—J. Caii de Can. Brit. Libellus.“Agasæum nostri abs re quòd intento sit in feram oculo vocant.”

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Camden has fallen into the same error with Caius, and confounded the Agasseus of Oppian with the gazehound of Britain; and even Ray has made the gazehound a variety of the Canis venaticus sagax, distinguished from his supposed consimilars of the same family by running on sight of his game—Synopsis Animalium. Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. iv.“qui aspectu feras insequitur.”

From the following portrait, compared with that drawn by Markham, we may decide the identity of the Agassæus and Beagle:

Let the reader compare these little pet-like, weakly, crooked, lank, wire-haired, dull-looking creatures, keen however, and excellent of nose, with his own experience of the beagle’s type and properties, and the representations of authors.⁠[405]

The poet gives some amusing instructions for breaking in the puppy of the Agassæus;

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comparing his restlessness to that of a young woman in travail with her first child,

The praises of the little beagle have been celebrated in Greek and Latin, verse and prose. Amongst the modern poets, he is found in the Album Dianæ Leporicidæ of Jac. Savary, under the title of “ululatorum ordo minorum”—“gens parvis devota feris;” and placed in the kennels of Britain—still sufficiently marked by her insular, geographical position, and the staunchness of her canine breed, but, unfortunately for the loyalty of Savary’s own countrymen, no longer exclusively characterized by the traitorous, regicide spirit of her inhabitants:

He is also mentioned by Angelinus Gazæus—see the Lagographia Curiosa of Paullini. Of the Greek portrait of Arrian we shall presently speak, under the Segusian dog.

It is to Gervase Markham, our “English master of economical philosophy,” as Wase calls him, that we are indebted for the fullest description of “the little beagle, which may be carried in a man’s glove;”—“bred,” says Gervase, “for delight only, being of curious scents, and passing cunning in their hunting, for the most part tiring, but seldome killing the prey, except at some strange advantage.” Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. iv. 14.“Their musicke is very smalle, like reeds, and their pace like their body, onely for exercise, and not for slaughter.”

The Segusian dog mentioned by Arrian, in the third chapter of his Treatise on Coursing, as a sorry brute, quick-scented, with a pitiful and dolorous whine, instead of bark—rough and unsightly, and the more high-bred the more ugly—I believe to be identical with the last variety. The Bithynian has devoted an entire chapter of his entertaining and original manual to a description of the Ἑγουσίαι κύνες: whose name, he tells us, is derived from a Celtic people,⁠[406] 284amongst whom they were first bred, and held in repute for their nasal sagacity. For a full description of these smaller hounds of Gaul, the reader is referred to the cited chapter; and attached to my translation of the same, he will find a few illustrative notes. The remarks of Belin de Ballu, in his Animadversiones in Oppianum, show strange misapprehension of the ancient distinctions in the Celtic kennels. The Animadvers. in Oppian. Cyneg. i. 373.chiens courans of modern France are not the οὐέρτραγοι κύνες of the younger Xenophon; nor are the latter’s Ἑγουσίαι the “genus canum, quorum pili instar velleris ovium crispantur,” as incorrectly stated by this most learned editor of the Greek poet of the chase. The Segusians are rather the bigles of the present day—perhaps the bassets, a small variety of terrier-beagle, used in rabbit-hunting.⁠[407]

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CANES CELERES.

Hæ pedibus celeres.

This class,⁠[408] by far the least numerous of the three, contains only the Vertragus or Vertraha,⁠[409] and possibly the Sicamber;—of the latter of whom I have nothing to communicate—being neither mentioned by Xenophon, Pollux, Oppian, nor Nemesian. If he be, as has been supposed, a Belgic hound, he cannot be the boar-hound of Silius Italicus, without losing his claim to admission on our present file. No Canis Venaticus can be enrolled here, who runs otherwise than on sight of his game;—it is his characteristic property—⁠[410]

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and therefore the Belgian—Canis occultos agitat cum Belgicus apros—must be banished from hence to the sagacious class: amongst the inductores of which division, I have already placed him as a lime-hound.

The best description of the type of the present class will be found in the copious Manual of Arrian, c. iv. v. and vi.—introduced by the memorable summary at the conclusion of c. iii.—τὴν δὲ ἰδέαν, καλόν τι χρῆμά εἰσι, κατά τε τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αἱ γενναιόταται αὐτῶν καὶ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἅπαν καὶ τὴν τρίχα καὶ τὴν χρόαν· οὕτω ταῖς τε ποικίλαις ἐπανθεῖ τὸ ποικίλον, καὶ ὅσαις ἁπλῆ ἡ χρόα ἐστὶν ἀποστίλβει καὶ αὕτη, καί ἐστιν ἥδιστον θέαμα ἀνδρὶ θηρευτικῷ. And the following of Nemesian, who may be designated the poet of the pedibus celeres, as Gratius of the bellicosi, is correct as far as it goes;

Nor must I omit the beautiful and minutely faithful portrait of the Greek poet of Anazarbus, though aware that it has been appropriated to a variety of the nare sagaces, and that Rittershusius does not allude to any supposed resemblance to the Celtic dog in his commentary on Oppian. Bearing in mind, however, that this erudite scholar had only the writings of Xenophon and Pollux, and the scanty lines of the Faliscian and African poets, to aid his attempt to give name and place to a doubtful animal;—had no authorities to consult, particularly dedicated to the pedibus celeres in opposition to the nare sagaces, to whose cause, and that of the bellicosi, the Greek Cynegetica were exclusively, and the Latin principally confined, (for the treatise of Arrian was at that period undiscovered in the Vatican,)—and therefore could not assimilate the Oppianic hound to the Celtic type;—I am not at all surprised that he has left this resemblance unnoticed. Subsequent commentators following in his footsteps, the Celtic dog has been as entirely disregarded on Oppian’s page, as if he had been never admitted on his muster-roll. 287The courser, I am confident, will recognize many of the features, as well as the wonted quarry, of his favourite hound, in the following extract;—which, if it cannot be exclusively appropriated to the Vertragus of Celtica, will assuredly admit only the swiftest of the sagacious class to a participation of its type:

The advocate of the Celtic hound may allege, in support of his interpretation, that such ancient dogs as ran on scent were more or less long-eared,⁠[411]—being so represented on the monuments of antiquity;—and may ask how the small ears of Oppian’s dog, if interpreted of the sagacious class, are to be reconciled with the representations of Tempesta, Montfaucon, and others, and the down-hanging ears of modern Canes Venatici of the keen-nosed class? Again—as the Cilician was a perfect adept at versifying with the materials furnished by his predecessors, and certainly made the best use of their labours, is it not improbable that he should have altogether omitted the Celtic greyhound, so faithfully portrayed by the younger Xenophon, (with whose description that of the poet in no essential point differs,) and have mentioned two varieties of sagaces and one of bellicosi, to the entire neglect of the Vertragus type?

The deficiencies, if any, of his classical predecessors have been judiciously and tastefully supplied by the elaborate pen of Bargæus:

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Let the κύων Κελτικὸς of Arrian be the classic prototype of the modern greyhound—the Canis Gallicus of Ovid⁠[412]—whose style of 289coursing is sketched to the life in the well-known, and often-cited simile;

And again, in the fable of Lælaps, the far-famed “grewnd” of Bœotia;

Nor will the reader of modern Cynegetica forget the vivid sketch of Pterelas’s course by the Latin poet of Venusium:

The many portraits of these classical and semi-classical Cynegetica will be fitly closed with the following elegiac verses on a Canis 291Venatrix, whose characteristic attributes, pathetically written on a monumental stone by an unknown hand, but at once applied by us to the Celtic type, exemplify in the entombed a few of the anecdotes of Arrian’s Hormé:

Epitaphium Canis Venatricis.

The early history of the greyhound is confounded with the Epirote, as if they had a common lineage—a mistake which has arisen from their being considered equally of Grecian origin—whereas the greyhound has no connexion with ancient Greece. Fable, however, assigns them a common descent from the Lælaps of Bœotia,⁠[413]—from whom also sprung other dogs of classic fame. The history of this celebrated hound, and the lineage and geographical distribution of his descendants, are particularized in the Cynegeticon of Bargæus:

Arrian, from whose Manual of Coursing I purposely abstain to quote at length, because the reader can refer to my translation with little trouble, calls the greyhound by the barbarous title of De Venatione. c. iii.οὐέρτραγος κύων,⁠[414] expressly stating that he is so denominated in the Celtic 293tongue, not from any particular people, like the Cretan, Carian, and Spartan hounds, but from his quality of speed, as some of the Cretans are distinguished by certain peculiarities of character. Here, however, our author’s ignorance of the Celtic language has led him into an error. Being unable, probably, to explain a term which had reached him in a corrupt form, he falsely derived it from the dog’s most characteristic property, J. Vlitii Venat. Novant.ἀπὸ τῆς ὠκύτητος: whereas in truth it is compounded of Velt, a plain or open country,⁠[415] the “arvum vacuum” of Ovid, and racha, a hound of chase;⁠[416] and consequently294 signifies a champaign-dog, Encyc. Méthod. Les chasses. p. 290.un lévrier de plaine, a hound adapted for coursing over an open country.

The Vertagus, or Tumbler, (“quòd se, dum prædatur, vertat,” &c.) I scarce need observe, has no affinity whatever with the οὐέρτραγος κύων of Arrian. By Dr. Caius, in his Libellus de Canibus Britannicis, he is fully described; nor are his tricks forgotten by the Latin poet of Caen;

The files of classical antiquity afford no counterpart to the British Tumbler, unless it be in the Vertagus of Martial—a dog already allotted to the Celtic family, as, in some copies of the epigrammatist, written Vertragus.

It remains for me to mention the distinctions which have been made by naturalists in the greyhound type of our own islands,⁠[417] and 295to endeavour to trace its connexion with Gallia Celtica. The modern sub-varieties of our systematic writers on natural history are 296named from the countries in which the respective sorts most abound, English, Scotch, and Irish greyhounds. Spelman, whose authority is entitled to weight, in his remarks “De Canibus Veterum,” speaking of the Gloss. Arch. p. 113.“Leporarius levipes, qui ex visu prædam appetit arripitque, a greyhound, Ovidio Canis Gallicus,” subjoins, “sed propriè magìs Britannicus;” as if he deemed him of British origin,⁠[419] a native of our isle, like the inhabitants of the interior mentioned by Cæsar, De bello Gallico. L. iv. 12.“quos natos in insulâ ipsâ, memoriâ proditum dicunt;”—but he cites no testimony in support of his opinion. I do not believe either of the three sub-varieties of the dog in question indigenous of Great Britain; but rather that all our insular sorts originally sprang from the Celtic Vertragus:—the probability of which is supported by the history of the Symmachi Epist. L. ii. Ep. 77.distribution of the Celts themselves, and the name under which the dogs were sent by Flavian to his brother 297Symmachus at Rome. The Scots, a Celtic tribe, previously inhabiting some part of Western Europe, emigrated into Ireland during the third century, and gave to that, isle, pro tempore, the name of Scotland. Thence they spread over the Western islands, and took possession of the neighbouring district of Argyle, the land of the Gael or Gaul—giving eventually their name to the Northern part of Britain generally. May we not suppose the Irish and Scotch greyhounds to have been primevally derived from the same Celtic stock, accompanying these emigrants of Celtic Europe to Ireland, and thence to Scotland; in one or other of which territories they received the name of Canes Scotici, from the Scotish emigrants of Celtica, who accompanied them?⁠[420] and may not the English greyhound, improved in speed by careful management and judicious breeding, as his master increased in civilization and became more 298reclaimed, be derived, through such intermediate links, from the same parent source? The coarser varieties of the North, and of the sister Isle, are rarely seen in South Britain; and though at first closely connected with the Celt, and amongst his earliest descendants, are now considered farther removed from the genuine type of Celtica, the οὐέρτραγος κύων of the Greek manual, in consequence of commixture with the canes bellicosi and sagaces.

The strongest evidence we possess of the greyhound’s existence in Britain, in the reigns of Carus, his sons, and Diocletian, is afforded by the Cynegeticon of the African poet. For although I deny that this hound can be entitled to the local epithet Britannicus, bestowed on him by Spelman, to the superseding his usual titles, I readily grant, at the same time, that the exported veloces of Britain, of the Nemesian. Cyneget. vs. 124.Cynegeticon alluded to, were greyhounds. Nemesian must be considered almost entirely the poet of the pedibus celeres;—at least, in that portion of his hunting-poem which has survived the ravages of time. But the usual terms by which the greyhound is designated in Ovid, Gratius, Martial, and Arrian, are no where found in the poet of Carthage; in place of which invariably occur the terms catuli veloces. That by these terms the latter author intends hounds of the Celtic type, I have, on a careful re-perusal of his work, not the least doubt; though, when writing the note to the Preface, p. 11, I was inclined to view the veloces, particularly specified by Nemesian as of British export, as nimble harriers, rather than genuine greyhounds; and did not in consequence adduce the passage alluded to, when there endeavouring to fix the period of the latter’s introduction into Britain. Indeed, J. Vlitius, himself sceptical at first as to the nature of these swift-footed hounds, (see his remarks on Nemesian vs. 124.,) comes round to my conclusion in the progress of his annotations, (see his notes on vs. 233.). Nearly the whole of Nemesian’s instructions have reference to canes cursores, beginning with their exportation from our own island—where, doubtless, they had been previously imported from Gaul—

and pursuing the subject in the departments of breeding, feeding, 299and entering of puppies to their game,⁠[421] (his remarks on these subjects being essentially applicable to hounds of the Celtic type,⁠[422]) he adds,

and then speaking of Tuscan dogs of scent, sagacious Inductores, he contrasts their form with that of the hounds in question,

at which point he suddenly arrests his pen, and changes his subject, deferring till a subsequent part of his poem, unfortunately lost, the qualities of this keen-nosed tribe of hounds,

The latter subjects completed, he again takes up the catuli veloces, and slips them on the sporting field, at the period of the year usual with modern coursers for the commencement of their diversion, viz. the beginning of winter;

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From the view, then, here taken of the identity of these veloces catuli of Nemesian with the Vertragi of Arrian, we may conclude that greyhounds had been exported from the British Isles to some more southern state, Rome or Carthage, when the native poet of the latter place sung their praises in his Cynegeticon. And from the same source, a supply of these rare and valuable dogs was kept up at Rome, in the reign of Theodosius, by the instrumentality of Flavian. Inmates, therefore, of Celto-Britannic kennels, they must have been, on the twofold evidence of Nemesian and Symmachus, at this early period of our dark and semi-fabulous annals. Whether the dogs transported from these isles, as rarities, by Flavian, “solennium rerum largus, et novarum repertor,” to grace with their “incredible force and boldnesse,” the Quæstorate of his brother Symmachi Epist. L. ii. Ep. 77.Symmachus at Rome, “quos prælusionis die ita Roma mirata est ut ferreis caveis putaret advectos,” are to be considered Irish or Scotch, according to modern distinctions, is quite unimportant; for probably at the period of the “oblatio” both were included under the same name. Indeed, it is well known, the inhabitant of Ireland bore the name of Scotus in the age of Claudian, who wrote, as well as Symmachus, in the reigns of Theodosius and Honorius,

and again,

That these Canes Scotici were our Canes bellicosi seems highly improbable; for the latter had been known in Rome for several centuries, and could not have been deemed rarities in the days of Symmachus. I am inclined, then, to view them as high-bred Celtic hounds, Arrian. de Venat. c. vi.εἴτε τοῦ δασέος γένους, εἴτε τοῦ ψιλοῦ, naturalized in these isles, and thence again exported to Rome by Flavian. From the earliest date of their existence, there have ever been two varieties of fleet Gallic hounds. As at this time we have greyhounds with rough, and others with smooth hair, so in the days of Arrian were they distinguished in the same way. In the sixth chapter of his Cynegeticus, on the 301colour of hounds,⁠[423] and its little importance to their merits, he observes that the hair, whether the dog be of the rough or smooth sort, should he fine, close, and soft:—by which I understand that, though the dog be what is termed wire-haired, the hair must not be coarse of texture, nor loose and shaggy. And from these sources we may derive the existing races of England, Scotland, and Ireland, without any necessary commixture with other blood, to account for the wire-haired skin. But the extraordinary sagacity of nose, superinduced on swiftness of foot, in certain varieties of modern Celtic hounds with rough coats, favours the notion of Buffon and others, that a cross has taken place with some alien, sagacious breed, at a remote period. Be this, however, as it may, we will consider the coarse-haired and more powerful varieties of Arrian’s Celt, the representatives of the wolf-hounds of Ireland and Scotland;⁠[424] and the fabulous Lælaps, Ovid. Metam. L. vii. 754.“the goodly grewnd” of Golding, presented by Dian to Procris,

a poetical picture of an individual, whose counterpart the author had seen, or heard of, in Celtic Gaul, or some Celtic colony, and whose eagerness in the wolf or fox chase is fully supported by his high-mettled descendants;

The modern Scotch greyhound differs from the Irish in many respects.⁠[425] The former is rough and wiry, has a bearded snout, and ears half-pricked; the latter has short smooth hair and pendent ears; the Scotch is sharp, swift, and sagacious; the Irish dull-looking, harmless, indolent. The former is still common in North Britain, the latter is become exceedingly rare everywhere. From Mr. Lambert’s description of a modern specimen, the Irish wolf-greyhound seems to have degenerated much in size.⁠[426]

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The genuine Celtic greyhound, such as he is represented on the Arch of Constantine, is the “Canis venaticus Graius seu Græcus” 304of Ray;—Synopsis Animalium.“qui aspectu feras venatur, cursu velocissimus, formâ corporis et incessu decorus;”⁠[427]—a definition strictly harmonizing with Arrian’s more copious description, in c. iii. c. viii. sub fine, and other parts of his manual. The genuine quarry of this hound is the little fugacious hare; of which the historian of the Celtic chase supplies us with many illustrative anecdotes. That such was Arrian. de Venatione. c. xv. xvi. xvii.“the startled quarry” whereat “the gallant greyhounds,” Hormé, Bonnas, Cirras,⁠[428] were wont to “strain,” over the champaign fields of 305Cisalpine or Transalpine Gaul, or wherever the father of the leash slipped the “proavorum atavi” of the courser’s hound,⁠[429] can admit, I think, of no doubt. Indeed, the field-instructions of the Cynegeticus refer almost exclusively to hare-coursing: nor does it appear that the author himself, sensible, as he confessedly was, of the peculiar physical adaptation of the greyhound to the hare-course, was ever guilty of misapplying the dog to inappropriate quarry. The red-deer, however, is noticed by him, in his 23rd chapter, as a chase of the Vertragus, fraught with imminent danger, and needing high-mettled hounds.⁠[430] And, subsequently, the same animal is pursued with Scythian and Illyrian galloways on the open plains of Mœsia, Dacia, Scythia, and Illyria:⁠[431]—and, in the De Venat. c. xxiv.following chapter, we find the like diversions practised in Africa with barbs;⁠[432] whereby 306red and roe deer, and wild asses of extraordinary agility and endurance, are captured by mere boys—a style of chase resembling the Arabian onager-hunting of the elder Xenophon’s Anabasis. But whatever innovations upon the established field-sport of the mother country may have been effected in remote Celtic colonies, by the substitution of other larger quarry in lieu of the hare, the latter is alone to be viewed as the legitimate prey of the Vertragus.

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Ὅτι μὲν οὖν καὶ ἑτέροις ὑπὲρ τούτων ἐσπούδασται, καλῶς οἶδα· ἐγὼ δὲ ἐμαυτῷ ταῦτα, ὅσα οἷον τε ἦν, ἀθροίσας, καὶ περιβαλὼν αὐτοῖς τὴν συνήθη λέξιν, κειμήλιον οὐκ ἀσπούδαστον ἐκπονῆσαι πεπίστευκα. Εἰ δέ τῳ καὶ ἄλλῳ φανεῖται ταῦτα λυσιτελῆ, χρήσθω αὐτοῖς· ὅτῳ δὲ οὐ φανεῖται, ἐάτω τῷ πατρὶ θάλπειν τε καὶ περιέπειν· οὐ γὰρ πάντα πᾶσι καλὰ, οὐδὲ ἄξια δοκεῖ σπουδάσαι πᾶσι πάντα.

Ælian. de Natura Animalium, Præfat.

For the amusement of such as may be desirous of consulting the Cynegetical works cited in the preceding annotations on Arrian and the Appendix, a list of their respective titles and editions is subjoined.

The author does not pretend to enumerate all the known editions of each Cynegeticon, but only those of his own library. Where two or more of the same work are mentioned, the copy made use of is either pointed out by specification, or the name of the editor and place of publication are printed in italics. In cases of disputed text, different editions have been collated, and the most approved readings selected for use.

Enrolled in the catalogue are a few treatises de re Venaticâ which the present writer has never seen. They are admitted on the authority of earlier compilers, in whose bibliothecæ they appear: but their importance to the θήρης κλυτὰ δήνεα (Oppian. Cyneg. i. 16.) is assumed rather than established. Remoteness of residence from public libraries must plead for the author’s unavoidable ignorance. He could not certify by actual examination the admissibility of any book not on his own shelves. The works in question are distinguished by the prefixture of an asterisk.

A Bibliotheca Cynegetica upon the following plan was first attempted by Rittershusius in his Prolegomena to Oppian, imperfectly executed by Lallemant in his Bibliotheca Historica et Critica Thereuticographῶn, and subsequently, but still far short of perfection, by Belin de Ballu in his prefatory matter to the poet of Anazarbus. The latter’s catalogue professedly excludes all prosaic works, save those of the classic ages—departing from its rule in the solitary instance of Conrad Heresbach’s Compendium. Of the English Cynegetica, Somerville’s Chace is alone admitted, the doggrel of the Book of St. Alban’s possessing insufficient poetical pretensions, perhaps, in the eyes of a foreigner, to place Dame Juliana Berners, or the “one sumtyme scole mayster of seynt Albons,” or whoever be the author of these antique canons, amongst those “qui metricè hanc materiam persecuti sunt.” Proleg. in Oppian. p. xvi. Ed. 4to.

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Xenophontis Opuscula Politica, Equestria, et Venatica, cum Arriani Libello De Venatione, &c. J. G. Schneider. Oxonii, mdcccxvii.

Xenophontis Scripta Minora, &c. L. Dindorf. Lipsiæ, mdcccxxiv.

On Hare Hunting, from Xenophon, by W. Blane, Esq. London, 1788.

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Gratii, qui Augusto principe floruit, de Venatione Lib. i. This edition of the Faliscian is contained in the rare little Aldine volume, entitled Poetæ tres egregii, &c. Aldus, mdxxxiiii. Republished by Sig. Feyerabendius, ad calcem Venatûs et Aucupii J. A. Loniceri. Francoforti, mdlxxxii.

Gratii Falisci Cynegeticon, &c. Th. Johnson, A.M. Londini, mdcxcix.

Poetæ Latini Rei Venaticæ Scriptores, &c. G. Kempheri. Lugdun. Batav. mdccxxviii.

Poetæ Latini Minores. J. C. Wernsdorf. Altenburgi, mdcclxxx.

A Poem of Hunting, by Gratius the Faliscian. Englished and Illustrated by Christopher Wase, Gent. London, 1654.

Arrianus De Venatione, ex interpretatione L. Holstenii. Paris, mdcxliv.

Arriani Tactica, Peripli, Cynegeticus, et Epicteti Stoici Euchiridion, ex Recensione Nicolai Blancardi. Amstelodami, 1683.

⁠[433]ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΤΑ ΣΩΖΟΜΕΝΑ κ. τ. λ. Ἐπεξεργασθέντα καὶ Ἐκδοθέντα ὑπὸ ΝΕΟΦΥΤΟΥ ΔΟΥΚΑ εἰς τόμους ἑπτά. ΕΝ ΒΙΕΝΝΗι ΤΗΣ ΑΟΥΣΤΡΙΑΣ, 1809.

Xenophontis Opuscula Politica, &c. cum Arriani Libello de Venatione. J. G. Schneider. Oxonii, mdcccxvii.

Julii Pollucis Onomasticum. Hemsterhuis. Amst. mdccvi. The fifth book, addressed to the Emperor Commodus, affords much valuable information on the technicalities of classical venation.

Oppiani Poetæ Cilicis De Venatione Lib. iiii. &c. Conrad. Rittershusii. Lugduni Batav. mdxcv.

Oppiani Poetæ Cilicis De Venatione Libri iv. &c. Joh. Gottlob Schneider. Argentorati, mdcclxxvi.

Oppiani Poema De Venatione, &c. Jac. Nic. Belin De Ballu. Argentor. 1786.

J. Brodæi Turonensis Annotationes in Oppiani Cyneg. L. iiii. &c. Basileæ. mdlii.

Oppiani De Venatione Libri iiii. Joan. Bodino interprete, &c. Lutetiæ, mdlv.

* The First Book of Oppian’s Cynegetics translated into English Verse, &c. by John Mawer, A.M. London, 1736.

M. Aurelii Olympii Nemesiani Cynegeticôn Lib. i. Aldus, mdxxxiiii. (The same Aldine volume as before referred to, entitled Poetæ tres egregii, &c.) Nemesian also occurs in the collections of Poetæ Venatici of Feyerabendius, Johnson, Kempher, and Wernsdorf.

ΚΥΝΟϹΟΦΙΟΝ. Liber De Curâ Canum. This work of311 Demetrius of Constantinople, written about A.D. 1270, was first published by Aurifaber. Wittembergæ, mdxlv. The author’s editions are those of Rigaltius in the Rei Accipitrariæ Scriptores. Lutetiæ. mdcxii. and of Johnson, attached to his Latin Poets of the Chace. Londini, mdcxcix.

* Le Art de Venerie le quel Maistre Guillame Twici Venour le Roy d’Angleterre fist en son temps per aprandre autres. This Ms. is reported by the Historian of English Poetry, Vol. ii. p. 221. note m. to have been formerly among the Mss. of Mr. Fermor, of Tusmore in Oxfordshire.

The Craft of Hontyng of Mayster John Gyfford and Willm Twety that were with King Edward the Secunde. It is also denominated Le Venery de Twety and of Maystr John Giffarde. Ms. Cotton. Vespas. B. xii. The French work is unknown to the writer: but of The Craft of Hontyng a faithful transcript is in his possession.

* Des Deduitz de la Chasse de Bestes Sauvaiges et des Oyseaux de Proye. The celebrated work of Gaston Phebus, Comte de Foix, and Vicomte de Bearn, written about the year 1347; first printed by Anthoine Verard; secondly, by Jehan Treperel; and, subsequently, by Philippe Le Noir, under the title of Le Miroye de Phebus. The author has no copy of this work.

The Book of Huntyng the which is clepyd Mayster of the Game. Ms. Cotton. Vesp. B. xii. Mayster of Game. Ms. Harl. 5086. The author’s copy is a transcript of the Cottonian text, corrected by collation with the Harleian.

The Boke of St. Albans. The first and second editions (1486 and 1496.) being exceedingly rare, the author is satisfied to quote from Mr. Haslewood’s elegant reprint of Wynkyn de Worde’s edition of the latter date. London, mdcccx.

Hawking, Hunting, and Fishing, with the True Measures of Blowing. At London, printed by Edward Allde, 1586.

Cæsaris Borgiæ Ducis Epicedium, per Herculem Strozam ad divam Lucretiam Borgiam Ferrariæ Ducem. Francoforti, mdlxxxii.

Adriani Cardinalis S. Chrysogoni ad Ascanium Cardinalem S. Viti, Vicecancellarium Venatio. Aldus, mdxxxiiii. (Poetæ tres egregii anteà citati). Francoforti, mdlxxxii.

Venatus et Aucupium Iconibus artificiosiss. ad vivum expressa, et succinctis versibus illustrata per Joan. Adam. Lonicerum, Francfortanum. Francoforti, mdlxxxii.

Venatus et Aucupia Johan. Stradensis et Philip. Galle. 1578. Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium, Pugnæ Bestiariorum; et Mutuæ Bestiarum, depictæ à Joanne Stradano; editæ à Joanne Gallæo: carmine Illustratæ à C. Kiliano Dufflæo.

* Belisarius Aquaviva de Venatione, Aucupio, &c. Nap. 1519. Basil. 1571. apud Conrad. Gesner. Histor. Quadrupedum.

Ad Christianissimum Regem Galliæ de Canibus et Venatione Libellus. Authore Michaele Angelo Blondo. In quo omnia ad 312canes spectantia, morbi, et medicamina continentur, Prisca et Neoterica etiam exempla, à nemine hactenùs accuratiùs scripta, insidiæ ferarum, et proprietates, cum quibusdam venationibus nostri sæculi maximorum principum cognitu dignissimis, Romæ, mdxliiii. One of the rarest of the Cynegetica of the 16th century. A small thin 4to of thirty-seven leaves. The passages cited by the author are principally from Gesner’s H. Q.

* Gulielmus Tardivus de Accipitribus et Canibus Venaticis, apud Conrad. Gesner. Histor. Quadrupedum. (Auctores Gallici.)

Conrad. Heresbachii Rei Rusticæ L. iv. item de Venatione, Aucupio, et Piscatione Compendium, in usum Heroum et Patrumfamilias ruri agentium concinnatum. The latter part is noticed in the preface to Arrian’s Cynegeticus under the name of Compendium Thereuticæ Universæ, a title given it by Rittershusius in his Oppianic Prolegomena. The author’s quotations are principally from Conrad Gesner’s Historia Quadrupedum; but since the prefatory remarks have been sent to press, he has examined a copy of the original (Spiræ Nemetum ciↄ.iↄ.xciv). As an Epitome of Xenophon and Oppian, the appendix has merit—containing brief notices of many varieties of ancient and modern hounds, their style of hunting, quarry, &c. Part of the third book De Re Rusticâ treats of dogs connected with rural economy, the Œcurus, Villaticus, &c.

Hier. Fracastorii Alcon, sive de Cura Canum Venaticorum. Venet. mdlv. Fracastor’s poem is appended to the Poetæ Venatici of Johnson. Lond. mdcxcix. and of Kempher. Lugd. Bat. mdccxxviii.

Petri Lotichii Secundi Eclogæ. The author’s citations are from the Poemata Omnia Petri Lotichii Secundi à P. Burmanno Secundo. Amstel. mdccliv.

Natalis Comitum Veneti de Venatione, Libri iiii. Ald. Fil. Venet. mdli. also attached to his Mythologiæ Libri Decem. Lugduni. mdcv.

Petri Angelii Bargæi Cynegeticon. Poemata Omnia, &c. Florent. apud Juntas, mdlxviii. The poem De Aucupio is also cited in a separate form apud Juntas, mdlxvi.

Joannis Darcii Venusini Canes. Paris, mdxliii. Francofort. mdlxxxii.

Joannis Caii Britanni De Canibus Britannicis Liber Unus. Londini, mdlxx. This Libellus is also annexed to Johnson’s Edition of Gratius and Nemesian, and to Kempher’s Poetæ Venatici, Holinshed’s Account of British Dogs is a translation from Caius’s work.

La Vénerie de Jaques Du Fouilloux, &c. Paris, mdlxxxv. mdcxiiii. The author’s references are to the latter edition, wherein are contained Adjonctions à la Vénerie de Jacques Du Fouilloux. La Chasse du Loup (by Jean de Clamorgan): La Chasse du Connin: and an additional Essay on Cyniatrics, entitled Autres Remèdes pour guarir les Chiens Malades de Diverses Maladies, &c.

The Compendium of Hunting in La Maison Rustique is epitomised, according to Christopher Wase, from Fouilloux’s Treatise.

313

The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, &c. London, 1575. 1611. The authorship of this version of Fouilloux is much disputed:—by some it is given to Turbervile, the undoubted translator of the Booke of Falconrie; by others to Gascoigne; and by a third party to C. Burke. The citations are from the edition of 1611, and generally under the name of the first-mentioned author.

* A Short Treatise of Hunting, compyled for the delyght of Noblemen and Gentlemen, by Sir Thomas Cockaine, Knight. London, 1591. The writer has never seen the rare tract of this “professed hunter, and not a schollar.”

The Gentleman’s Academie; or, The Booke of St. Albans, &c. by G. M. London, 1595.

Maison Rustique; or, The Countrie Farme, &c. translated into English by Richard Surflet. London, 1600.

The Countrey Farme, &c. (as the last,) by Gervase Markham. London, 1616.

A Jewell for Gentrie, &c. London, 1614.

Countrey Contentments; or, The Husbandman’s Recreations, &c. by G. M. London, 1633.

* Jacobi Micylli Κυνολόγιον. A Latin poem mentioned by Paullini in his Cynographia Curiosa: where also occur * Angelinus Gazæus, * Ronsæus, and others; the Venatio Medica of the latter being rather above the ordinary stamp of the muse of Æsculapius.

De Venatione Tractatus, in quo de Piscatione, Aucupio, Sylvestriumque insectatione agitur. Auctore Alfonso Isachio. Regii, 1625. A very ridiculous treatise on Piscatorial Licences, &c. of some rarity, but of no value to practical or literary sportsmen. It has been re-published, with other Cynegetical tracts of like description, by Fritsch.

Album Dianæ Leporicidæ, sive Venationis Leporinæ Leges. Auctore Jac. Savary, Cadomæo. Cadomi, mdclv. To some editions of this poem is annexed Venatio Vulpina et Melina of the same author; but the writer’s copy has it not.

Venationis Cervinæ, Capreolinæ, Aprugnæ, et Lupinæ Leges. Autore Jac. Savary Cadomensi. Cadomi, mdclix.

Jacobi Vanierii, &c. Prædium Rusticum. Tolosæ, mdccxxx. mdccxlii. The author’s citations are from the latter edition.

The Gentleman’s Recreation: in four parts. London, 1706.

The Gentleman’s Recreations: in three parts. By R. Blome. London, 1710.

The Chace. A poem by William Somerville, Esq.

To this list might be added the French Cynegetica of Gauchet, Pomey, Passerat, De Salnove, De Serey, Du Sable, Gaffet, De la Conterie, D’Yauville, and others; the Encyclopédie Méthodique, Dictionnaire de toutes les espèces de Chasses; and the Italian Cynegetica of Scandianese, Valvasone, Raimondi, Poggesi, Gatti, and others; to some of which the author is beholden for a few remarks. The catalogue might be amplified, too, by incorporating the numerous tracts on the laws of the Chase collected by Fritsch and Manwood; the notices of early British and Anglo-Saxon hunting gathered by 314Pegge, in the Archæologia; by Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes; and by Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons; and though last, not least valuable, whether we regard the novelty of such a summary, or the elegance and classic taste of its execution, the article on Hunting by Mr. Smedley, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana.

Connected with the subject of Venation, the following works on Natural History are referred to, descriptive of the external characters and habits of ferine animals, and their quadrupedal pursuers:

Aristotelis Historia de Animalibus à J. C. Scaligero. Tolosæ, mdcxix.

Scriptores Rei Rusticæ Veteres Latini. J. M. Gesner. Lipsiæ, mdcclxxiii.

ΓΕΩΠΟΝΙΚΑ. Geoponicorum sive De Re Rusticâ Libri xx. Petr. Needham, A.M. Cantabrigiæ, mdcciv.

Plutarchi Opera Omnia (De Solertiâ Animalium, &c.) Paris, mdcxxiv.

Æliani De Naturâ Animalium Libri xvii. J. G. Schneider. Lipsiæ, mdcclxxxiv.

C. Plinii Secundi Historiæ Mundi Libri xxxvii. J. Dalecampii. Lugduni, mdlxxxvii.

C. Julii Solini Polyhistor ex edit. C. Salmasii. M. Andr. Goezio. Lipsiæ, mdcclxxvii.

Phile De Animalium Proprietate à J. C. de Pauw. Trajecti ad Rhenum, mdccxxx.

C. Gesneri Historiæ Animalium Liber primus, de Quadrupedibus Viviparis. Tiguri, mdlix.

U. Aldrovandi Opera. Bononiæ, mdcxxxii.

S. Bocharti Hierozoicon, seu de Animalibus Sacræ Scripturæ. Londini, mdclxiii.

Cynographia Curiosa, &c. à Christ. Franc. Paullini. Norimbergæ, mdclxxxv.

Lagographia Curiosa, &c. à Christ. Franc. Paullini. Aug. Vind. mdcxci.

Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum, &c. Auctore Joanne Raio. S. R. S. Londini, 1693.

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ERRATA.

P. 15.	l. 8. for general, read genuine.
108.	n. 3. l. 2. τάχος. 5. ἔχει.
117.	n. 4. for Bruyer, read Bruyerinus.
126.	n. 7. l. 2. obtruncant.
145.	Quotation from Gratius, v. 299. read leveis.
148.	Quotation from Nemesian, v. 162. read complere.

The author craves forgiveness for unnoticed σφάλματα, errors of punctuation, accentuation, &c. whether chargeable on himself or the typothetæ.

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315

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