M. Desmoulins is of opinion that the modern numerous races of domestic dogs must be referred, each in its own country, to different unreclaimed species; and if so, allowing somewhat for emigration with man, and somewhat again for crosses among the varieties of each region, we must suppose that those, which manifest remarkable distinctive qualities, derived them originally from the wild indigenæ of each particular region. Exclusive of the jackal, he considers that there are three wild species in Europe, and Western Asia, which have contributed to produce the varieties of our domestic dog, at present known.

We may suppose the muzzle in this class more or less truncated, and the capacity of the cranium diminished. But the sketches of physical structure are too superficial in the ancient cynegetica to found a classification on the principle of M. F. Cuvier.

Aldrovandus explains color helvus as “medius inter rufum et album”—fawn.

The epithet “diversos” may indicate remoteness of birth-place as explained by Johnson; or difference of character as hinted by Wase—Gallia being far distant from Media, and the Celtic dog being sagacious as well as pugnacious, and therefore differing from the “indocilis Medus,” whose character was that of mere truculency, unredeemed by the least sagacity.

Belin de Ballu appears to consider the Oppianic Κελτοὶ Segusian hounds of scent, and not war-dogs. See his Animadversiones in Oppian. L. i. vs. 373. Did the poet include under the term Κελτοὶ all the various sorts of hounds supposed indigenous of Celtica—the war-dogs, the Vertragi, Segusii, and hybrids of Pliny? No country of antiquity affords such numerous varieties of the canine species as Gaul; and as the inhabitants are by the Greeks called Κελτοὶ, by the Romans Galli, and sometimes synonymously with the latter, Celtæ; so may Oppian, an eastern Greek, include under the term Κελτοὶ the various subdivisions of the canine tribe, throughout the whole territory of Gaul, however distinguished by earlier writers, either as indigenous of peculiar localities, or characterized by dissimilar qualities.

The high antiquity of the Canes Venatici of Gaul, espoused by Jaques du Fouilloux in the first chapter of his Vénerie—“De la race et antiquité des chiens courans, et qui premièrement les amena en France,” will amuse such of my readers as may think his work worth referring to. Deducing the breed from the kennel of Brutus,La Vénerie de Jaques du Fouilloux. c. i. (the son of Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, the son of Æneas) under whose fostering care les chiens courans et lévriers were exported from the Trojan territory, Fouilloux exhibits the very vessel of transportation, with its canine cargo aboard.

It is a generally received opinion that the pugnacious and sagacious dogs of Britain were constantly exported to Gaul; and Janus VlitiusVenatio Novantiqua. remarks that the same practice continued within his knowledge.

“Wherein,” says Sir Thomas Brown very justly, “are contained many things suspicious, not a few false, some impossible.”

To this dog Priscian alludes in his Periegesis, vs. 706.:

and John of Salisbury celebrates the race in his Policraticus; the merits of the breed losing nothing of its lustre, but rather gaining, in the prose narration;—“AlbaniDe Nugis Curialium L. i. c. iv. quidem in Asiâ canes habent leonibus fortiores: eos virtute canum, et suæ gentis artificio, quasi imbelles bestiolas populantur. Canibus quidem illis nulla ferarum fortior, nulla animosior est. Hos Hercules, tergemino Geryone victo, ab Italiâ trajecit in Asiam, eis virtutem quâ leones sternerent, quasi hereditariam derelinquens,” &c.

Arcadia boasted not these as her only ferine crosses—φῦλα θηρομιγῆ—for in the country of Lycaon, too, in all their glory, rode the στρατὸς θαυμαστὸς of semi-human centaurs, lords of the chase, around mount Pholoë,

Scaliger denies the inference—“Possunt quidem lupi mitiores fieri, sed nunquàm lupinam formam, et totalem feritatem exuent, quemadmodum et plantæ novo cultu mitescunt.”

Both these hybrid productions are alluded to, in his wonted strain of disgust, by the misanthropic Agrippa, in his 73rd chapter, de Agriculturâ.

In the rare tract of Jean de Clamorgan, I find a practical remark to the point:La Chasse du Loup. c. viii. “Noterez que j’ay veu quelquefois que les levriers font difficulté de prendre une loupe chaude, ains la veulent saillir et covrir comme une chienne: mais s’il y a aux cours quelque bonne levrière, elle la prendra par envie et jalousie.”

Blondus, in his ‘Libellus de Canibus et Venatione,’ remarks on the breed of demi-wolves, as they are called by Shakespeare, that this cross was not had recourse to in his days, because it was not wanted—“tantâ feritate et astutiâ non egemus:” but Wase bears testimony to its historical notoriety.Wase’s Illustrations, &c. of Gratius. p. 67. “From the experience of this country,” says he, “that semifera proles, or whelps, that come of the commixture of a bitch with a dog-wolf, is verified, called anciently lyciscæ; and this ill quality they find inherent to that sort of dogs, that they can by no way of bringing up be restrained from preying uponGratii Cyneg. vs. 167. cattle—‘sed præceps virtus ipsâ venabitur aulâ’—by which they have merited to be esteemed criminal before they be whelped; and there is a law in that behalf, which straitly enjoins, that if any bitch be limed with a wolf, either she must be hanged immediately, or her puppies must be made away: this may serve to avouch somewhat, all that character which Gratius gives of the semiferous mongrels, of his Hyrcanian and the Tiger.”

By the occurrences which took place at Melville Island, recorded in the Appendix of Capt. Parry’s 1st Voyage, we have clear proof that even an undomesticated wolf, in its natural and wild state, will have intercourse with a domestic dog.

The contiguity of India to Hyrcania, and the latter abounding with tigers, may be the cause of the same tale being told by Aristotle and Pliny of the tigri-canine cross of India, as by Gratius of that of Hyrcania. Both are of course purely fabulous. Whatever loss the fierce dog of Irak may occasion to pastoral property, herds and flocks—he is still to be cherished for his superior prowess in the savage hunt:—

The people of Hyrcania fostered their savage race of dogs for the express purpose, amongst others, of devouring the bodies of the dead—a practice noticed by Theodoret as being discontinued by them and the Caspians after their conversion to Christianity.

The hare on the reverse of Locrian numismata cannot be considered as proof of the pursuit of such quarry being the popular diversion of the country, nor as militating against the Locrian hound’s introduction here;—for the same impression occurs on other coins—on those of the Falisci, a colony of Argos, and others—having reference to historical or mythological subjects, unconnected with the field sports of the country.

Οἱ Μαιάνδρῳ παροικοῦντες Μάγνητες. The same are mentioned by Ælian, in his work de Naturâ Animalium, in conjunction with the Hyrcanians, as being attended to battle by canine auxiliaries—καὶ ἦν καὶ τοῦτο συμμαχικὸν ἀγαθὸν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐπικουρικόν. And Pliny, speaking of the Colophonii and Castabalenses, says they had Plin. L. viii. c. 40.“cohortes canum—fidissima auxilia, nec stipendiorum indigna.”

Ælian tells us of a war-dog, perhaps an Epirote, συστρατιώτην κύνα—who so distinguished himself with his Athenian lord at the battle of Marathon, as to be honoured with an effigy on the same tablet with his master.

For a fine representation of the Canis Molossus Venaticus, see De la Chausse, Museum Romanum, Tab. lxiv. and Montfaucon Antiquité expliquée, Chasse au Sanglier, Tom. iii. pl. 179. Several hunters are returning from the chase with the Magister Venationis, bearing in his hand a shield;—a cart drawn by oxen conveys a dead boar, on which lies a huge dog apparently killed in the fray, and by the side walks a second hound of the type alluded to. See also the Venationes Ferarum of Stradanus and Galle, plate viii. and the Genii hunting, from Maffei, at the beginning of this Appendix, where a Molossian-like hound is on the point of seizing a wild boar.

Lucan has “ora levis clamosa Molossi”—and Claudian “Molossi latrantes”—and into the error of his poetical predecessors Cardinal Adrian has fallen, in his Venatio ad Ascanium Cardinalem;—as if the Molossi were remarkably latrant, whereas closeness of mouth was their more distinctive quality: unless indeed this Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus refer to two different sorts of Molossi, the one latrant, the other mute and sagacious:

for he subsequently slips some boar-hounds, “per invia lustra mussitantes,” and others again are distributed about the covert by the harbourers or huntsmen; the latter being denominated “feros molossos.”

Refer to Surflet’s translation of Maison Rustique, good reader, if you have it, and smile at the portraiture of the watch-dog, the joint execution of my medical brethren, “Charles Stevens and John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke.” C. 27. p. 168.

The answer of the Canis Pastoralis (ὅτε φωνήεντα ἦν τὰ ζῶα) to the dissatisfied sheep is beautifully illustrative of his services in the economy of pastoral Xenophon Memorab. L. ii. c. vii.life:—ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι ὁ καὶ ὑμᾶς αὐτὰς σώζων, ὥστε μήτε ὑπὲρ ἀνθρώπων κλέπτεσθαι, μήτε ὑπὸ λύκων ἁρπάζεσθαι· ἐπεὶ ὑμεῖς γε, εἰ μὴ ἐγὼ προφυλάττοιμι ὑμᾶς, οὐδ’ ἂν νέμεσθαι δύναισθε, φοβούμεναι μὴ ἀπόλησθε—thereby making good his claim to a share of his master’s food.

Statues and pictures of κύνες φρουροδόμοι were sometimes exhibited on the entrance doors, or walls of vestibules—of which kind were the dogs wrought of gold and silver by Vulcan for Alcinous, Δῶμα φυλασσέμεναι μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο—and the Canis Catenarius of Petronius Arbiter—“ad sinistram intrantibus non longè ab ostiarii cellâ, canis ingens catenâ vinctus in pariete erat pictus, superque quadratâ literâ scriptum, CAVE CAVE CANEM.”—Even Mercury himself was sometimes there exhibited—upon the principle, I suppose, of setting a thief to catch a thief.

Aristotle alludes to Porter dogs in his Nicomachean Ethics, L. vii. c. vi. introducing them in a very pertinent illustration of the difference between incontinency of anger, and incontinency as to pleasure: anger seems to listen to reason, though it does not hear it distinctly, &c.—καθάπερ οἱ κύνες, πρὶν σκέψασθαι εἰ φίλος, ἂν μόνον ψοφήσῃ, ὑλακτοῦσιν· οὕτως ὁ θυμὸς, διὰ θερμότητα κ. τ. λ.

On which the indignant historian observes with warmth, “quò tam latè patens imperium? quò tantus liberorum numerus? quò denique tam arctâ benevolentiâ constricta Romana amicitia, si ad hæc tuenda nihil canino latratu ac morsu valentius duxit?”

The duke considers alauntz primarily derived from Spain, not natives of Britain; “As men clepyn greihoundes of England of Scotland and of Bretayn right so the alauntez and the houndes for the hawke cometh out of Spayn.” Minsheu deduces Alani “à regione quadam Epyri, quæ Albania dicitur, undè primùm advecti creduntur hi canes.” But they probably were bull-dogs in the common acceptation of the term.

The reader will remember the Alauntes of Chaucer, on which Dryden has bestowed rejuvenescence under the type of greyhounds, attendants of “the surly king of Thrace:”

It has been observed by an eminent living naturalist, that the cerebral capacity of the bull-dog is sensibly smaller than of any other race: and it is doubtless to the decrease of the encephalon that we must attribute his inferiority to all others, in every thing relating to intelligence. He is scarcely capable of any education, and is fitted for nothing but ferocious combat. In the ancient translation of Caius’s libellus by Holinshed, this savage brute is sketched to the life, as “an huge dogge stubborne, ougly, eagre, burthenous of body (and therefore but of little swiftnesse,) terrible and feareful to behold, and more fearse and fell then any Archadien curre.” Nor is our estimate of his might in conflict weakened by Raphael’s statement thatDescription of Britaine. B. iii. c. 13. “alone and wythout anye help at al, he pulled downe first an huge beare, then a parde, and last of al a lyon, each after other, before the Frenche King in one day.”

Amongst the coins of Cunobelin is a representation of a dog, probably of this native variety, tall enough, according to Pegge, and of sufficient strength “to carry a lady.” And in Thoresby’s Museum is a British coin “exhibiting a dog under a man on horseback.” (p. 338.)

The mastiff is at present principally used in this country as a watch-dog; and such appears to have been his vocation of old. “His office is for to kepe his maistre’s beestis,” says Duke Edmund, “and his maistre’s hous. and it is a good nature of houndis for thei kepen and defenden at her power al her maister goodes. thei byn of cherlich nater and of foule shap &c.”—“ther byn many good for men that hunten for profit of housold as for to gete fflesh. Also of maystifs and of alauntis ther byn many good for the wilde boor;”—but “it is of no greet maistrie ne of grete redynes the huntyng that thei do for here nature ys not tendre nosed in harde nor in sandy nor in dusty grounde.” For the etymology of the term mastiff, the reader is referred to Dr. Caius, Minsheu, Skinner, and Holinshed—and for that of ban-dog, a variety of the same, to Skinner in voce. The Mandatarius, Sarcinarius, Defensor, &c. of Caius, the custos curtis, pastoralis, porcaritius, ursaritius, catenatus, &c. of Spelman and others, are all probably Canes Mastivi.

The existence of these noxious beasts of prey, in the sylvan fastnesses of our islands, is too well authenticated by ancient records to be doubted.

On referring to Blount’s ancient tenures, we find many estates held per serjantiam, whereby the possessor was compelled to furnish these dogs for the destruction of wolves. See A. T. p. 15. p. 52. p. 60. p. 94.The Governour. B. i. c. xviii. “But Almighty God be thanked,” in the ejaculatory language of Sir Thomas Elyot, “in this realme be no such cruel beastes at present to be pursued!”

See Wase’s Illustrations, c. vi. “of the Styles of Hunting different from the English, both Antique and Forreigne.”

Mr. Ritson, in a posthumous work on the Celts, has left it on record that “the Britons, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, made use of Spanish dogs in a war with the Maroon negroes; having no longer any of their own fit for the purpose.”

In Pliny’s animated description of the Indian or Albanian dog’s assault, we observe the crafty wiles or fraudes of the Illyrian and Acarnanian breeds.Hist. Natur. L. viii. c. xl. “Horrentibus quippe per totum corpus villis, ingenti primùm latratu intonuit: mox inruit assultans, contraque belluam exurgens hinc et illinc artifici dimicatione quà maximè opus esset, infestans atque evitans, donec assiduâ rotatum vertigine afflixit.” Indeed all the bellicosi thus attack their prey—but generally in silence. The Indian was latrant, it seems, the Acarnanian mute.

Athamania, called also Illyricum, bordered on Thessaly and Acarnania.

Acyrus, says Wase, is “suspicious of corruption;” which Gronovius proposes to amend by reading Epirus, Vlitius substitutes Taygetus, and Heinsius Argivus.

Pheræ was situate between Demetrias and Pharsalus in Thessaly, near the lake Bœbe—ὑπὸ σκοπιὴν ὄρεος Χαλκωδονίοιο.Apollon. Rhod. L. i. vs. 50. I am not aware of the dogs of these several places being mentioned by any other author. Pheræ was probably celebrated for its breed of game; for, being one of the many haunts of Dian, it bestowed on the Goddess the local name of Pheræa:

This class appears to answer to the second of M. F. Cuvier, having the head and jaws shorter than those proper to our third class of pedibus celeres, but not so much truncated as in the canes bellicosi. The parietal bones, in such types as are supposed to resemble those of antiquity, do not approach each other above the temporal fossæ, but widen so as to enlarge the cerebral cavity of the forehead.

Perhaps Xenophon’s τὰ δὲ γένη τῶν κυνῶν ἐστὶ δισσὰ may not have so confined an application as here stated. The Καστόριαι and ἀλωπεκίδες may comprehend all the Canes Venatici of the Athenian’s day collectively—at least all such as were used by him in hare-hunting at Scillus.

With some of the descendants of the κυνοσουρίδες, the latrant sagacious Lacouni of the modern Votizza, Mr. Hobhouse reports that he enjoyed the sport of coursing with his Grecian host in the Morea. See Journey through Albania, Letter xvii.

A limehound—ἡ δὲ κύων ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ ἀφίξεται τόπον ὑλώδη ἰχνεύουσα——...—ἐπειδὰν δ’ ἀφίκηται ἐπὶ τὴν εὐνὴν, ὑλακτεῖ, κ. τ. λ.

A term borrowed, according to Mr. Douce, from the Spaniards, who call the wild cat gato-montes.

Hagnon Astylides—as the Cretans used ἀγνεῖν, according to Hesychius, for ἄγειν, ὁ ἀγνῶν may stand for ὁ κυνηγός. See Wernsdorf, Excursus iii. ad Gratii v. 215. Poetæ Latini Minores, Tom. i. p. 242.

Caius’s love of the marvellous in natural history surpasses (considering the age in which he lived) that of Ælian and Albertus Magnus. Under the heads of Urcanus and Lacæna, this credulous correspondent of the acute Conrad Gesner notes, seemingly in good earnest, that the former is the offspring of the Canis Catenarius and bear, the latter of the dog and fox,J. Caii de Canibus Brit. Libell. “quos, licèt inimicos, pruriens tamen libido sæpè ita hic conjungit, ut alibi solet.” The truth, however, of the latter maybe doubted, after the impossibility of the former.

We may suppose the far-famed hound of Sparta, the foxite harrier, “vulpinâ specie,” not very unlike the prick-eared, or at least semi-pendulous-eared lurcher of modern days, employed by a poaching shepherd to guard his flock, and too often to catch at force, κατὰ πόδας, his master’s hares, or drive them into the wily laqueus or snare:

he is too well known by his depredations in the hare-warren to need a fuller delineation.

Janus Vlitius considers the Spartan a long-eared hound, and proposes to read ὦτα μακρὰ instead of μικρὰ in Xenophon’s minute description of the type of excellence in this breed: but Horace’s “aure sublatâ” would rather favour the notion that the ear was small and pricked up in pursuit of game, as we see in lurchers, and such-like poaching tikes:

on which Dacier observes, “plus les chiens sont courageux, plus ils dressent les oreilles en courant;” a quality for which a prick-eared sharp-scented lurching cur might be praised—which is characteristic of the Molossus, but odious in the genuine well-bred greyhound, with which the “veloces catuli” and “fulvus Lacon” of the contemporary poets of Rome have been ignorantly identified by monkish annotators.

This quality Aristotle justly attributes to the length of the nostrils of the Spartan hound, affording a more extensive surface for the distribution of the minute branches of the olfactory nerves—ὅσων οἱ μυκτῆρες μακροὶ, οἷον τῶν Λακωνικῶν, ὀσφραντικά.

To Darcius of Venusium we owe the following description of the ardour of the Spartan pack;

Solinus and Pliny, while they admit the religious adoration of Diana by the natives of Crete, deny to the soil many of the common beasts of chase. “Ager Creticus,” says the former naturalist, “sylvestrium caprarum copiosus est, cervo eget. Lupos, vulpes, aliaque quadrupedum noxia nusquam educat.”

This canine name is not found in any other Cynegeticon. From the construction put on the passage by Wernsdorf, it appears that he would derive the Metagon from a Spartan and Cretan cross: but how, let me ask, could the huntsman breed a mute inductor, whose essential attribute was closeness,Gratii Cyneg. vs. 231. “ne voce lacesseret hostem,” from the union of two such latrant races?—A litter, so bred in Actæon’s pack, was any thing but mute, “Labros, et Agriodos, et acutæ vocis Hylactor,” as above cited. Wase’s interpretation of the passage is more correct—see his version, vs. 211. where the lines of Gratius are differently rendered than in the chapter on the geography of the poem, p. 38.

Claudian bestows the title Molossian on the entire pack, to designate, it may be, their ferocity:

The loud latrancy of the tribe escaped not the notice of the bard of Avon, who has cleverly appropriated much of the borrowed shape and κλαγγὴ of a modern pack (Sir Thomas Lucy’s, perhaps, or other Warwickshire squire’s) to our classic breed of the olden time:

With Angelio’s description of the Cretan hounds, the more striking features of which are drawn from passages already cited, I close their portraiture.

The dog, which sits at the foot of the noble statue of Meleager, is, probably, a representation of the animal which assisted the hero of Calydon in his attack of the wild boar—(Ovid. Metam. L. viii. vs. 272.“infestæ famulus, vindexque Dianæ”)—that had laid waste the domain of his father Œneus. (See F. Perrier, Tab. 51. and 52. ex Ædibus Pichiniis, and Montfaucon Antiq. Expliq. Tom. I.) He is apparently a boar-hound, and perhaps of the type of Etolia or Calydon—the names being indifferently applied to the same dog, from Calydon, (the rocky Calydon of the Homeric catalogue, Iliad ii. 640.) the capital of the state, over which the sons of Œneus once reigned.

Such a sire was most likely to correct the “vanæ linguæ vitium” of the Calydonian breed; and from such parentage may have been deduced the Glympicus of the son of Astylus. No dam could cross more appropriately with a Molossian sire, contributing, on her part, the important qualities of speed, sagacity, and unwearying ardour of pursuit; and receiving, from the male side, courage, strength, and closeness of mouth. The cited lines of Gratius, carefully perused in connexion with those which follow in the text, will, I think, warrant the parentage assigned to the hound in question; and such a view will materially assist the general understanding of a somewhat obscure part of the Cynegeticon.

Without such auxiliaries all the hunter’s toil will be fruitless, says Bargæus:

See the mode of breaking-in the limier, chien de traict, in J. Savary’s rare work, Venationis Cervinæ Leges, L. ii. sub initio.

The Ascrean Poet’s hunting-picture on the shield of Hercules is rather a chase at speed, than trailing after leporine game;

“Umber is here,” says Wase, “the Bracco of Italy; and as their dog is timorous, so their bore is not very courageous. Whence the poet,—Thuscus aper generosior Umbro.”

A close-mouthed hound, probably, with much of the pugnacious disposition of our first class, added to his sagacity. Many of the limehound tribe, at least those used in trailing after fierce prey, must have had a strong dash of the same daring spirit—not so, however, the uncrossed Umbrian and Gelonian.

“The hunting used by the ancients was much like that way which is at present taken with the Raindeare which is seldome hunted at force, or with hounds, but onely drawne after with a blood-hound, and forestall’d with nets and engines. So did they with all beasts; and therefore a dog is never commended by them for opening before hee hath by signes discover’d where the beast lyeth in his layre, as by their drawing stiffe our harbourers are brought to give right judgment. Therefore I doe not finde that they were curious in the musique of their hounds, or in a composition of their kennell and pack, either for deepenesse or lowdnesse, or sweetnesse of cry like to us,” &c.

The Canis ductor, or lime-hound of the middle ages, the ἐμβιβαστὴς and μηνυτὴς of ancient glossaries, “qui odorisequâ nare spelæa ferarum, et diverticula deprehendit,” was strongly allied to, if not identical with, the Sleut-hound of Scotland, the blood-hound, lyme-dog, or limer (from the lyam or leash with which he was led) of authors, employed in the pursuit of animals of chase, and the discovery of murders and ambuscades. See the Glossaries of Spelman and Ducange, in voce.

Skinner defines the Limmer “Hybris, i. e. canis vilior ex cane sagace venatico cum Molosso copulato prognatus,”—and such probably was the parent stock of this much-famed dog. The Lorarius of Caius must have been a more nimble animal than the Sleut-hound—“propter velocitatem et gravius feram urget, et citiùs capit.” The Lymer is fully treated of in De Langley’s curious manuscript intitled Mayster of Game, c. xx. et seqq. Much also will be found relative to him in the Book of St. Alban’s, Fouilloux, Turberville, and Blome: and he is particularly described by the Latin poet of Caen, under the title of “Canis armillaris.”

The following portrait by the poet of Barga is worthy of exhibition:

He is the “Prævius it loro catulus devinctus” of Vanière’s Prædium Rusticum, L. xvi. Great, however, as was his celebrity in the sporting field of the classic and middle ages, and even till a century and a half ago,—

the Limier, in a state of pure blood, is considered almost extinct.