Hound is sometimes applied to all dogs, as if Minshew’s and Junius’s derivation of the term were correct—à κυνίδιον dim. à κύων: but in England the term most commonly signifies a hunting-dog, to which sense the A. S. huntian, hent-an, to pursue, to search after, affords a more probable root.

The etymology of the term Petronius is not of easy solution. By critics it has been fancifully derived from the firmness, strength, and hardness of the feet of this variety of dog; in consequence of which he was enabled to run over rough and rocky ground without Hist. Nat. L. i. 255. Gloss. Arch. p. 114.injury—κύων εὔπους. Gesner mentions a tributary stream of the Tiber called Petronia, “quòd per petras fluat.” Spelman, in his Glossary, gives Petrunculus as a synonym of Petronius, citing the above passage of Gratius; and underEjusd. p. 7. Wase’s illustrations. Acceptor, explains Petrunculus in a marginal note by “a brachet.” The Spanish use Perro, says Wase, as their common appellation of a dog.

Schneider substitutes Ἑγουσίαι for Ἐγουσίαι, (spiritu mutato)—the Latin term being Segusii, as ἓξ, sex. Σεγουσίαι, Blancard.

“Greyhounds are onely for the coursing of all sorts of wilde beasts by main swiftnesse of foot; they doe not any thing more than their eies govern them unto, being led by a natural instinct or hatred which they beare to all sorts of wilde beasts.”—The Countrey Farme, by G. Markham. c. xxii.“Hounds are those which by vertue of their scents, smells, or noses, do find out all manner of wilde beasts,” &c.—See the distinctions of the two races admirably drawn by G. Markham, p. 673. of Surflet’s version of La Maison Rustique.

It is my opinion that these veloces were greyhounds,—which having been exported from Gaul, their native soil, into Britain, were thence again sent to Italy;—and therefore I have nothing to say about them here. The passage is not of easy application—some commentators interpreting it as having reference to one variety of hound, and some to another:—

See some further remarks under the Vertragus of Class III.

Of what country were the Canes Petronii indigenous?—Vlitius claims them, without proof, for Belgium—denies all knowledge of them to Italy, beyond mere report—unceremoniously disallows the pretensions of Gaul—and, for reasons equally inadequate, those of Britain. But the latter, in my opinion, has as well-founded a claim to the breed as Belgium.

Under the Canis venaticus sagax, ferarum indagator et sectator, the primary definition of Ray, we may place the modern sub-varieties; the Sanguinarius seu furum deprehensor of Ray, the Leverarius of Caius, and Venaticus minor of Ray.

The Sanguinarius, or blood-hound, is the Canis Scoticus, ane Sleuth-hound, of Gesner’s Appendix; briefly therein described from Hector Boethius; and answering to the Inductor of the Classical ages more nearly than to any other ancient type. He is beautifully described by Somerville, and faithfully by Caius, and Holinshed; nor is Tickell’s sketch, in his fragment on hunting, unworthy of perusal.

The second sub-variety of the British hound of chase, the Leverarius, harrier or fox-hound, (“sunt ex his,” says Caius, “qui duos, ut vulpem atque leporem, variatis vicibus sequi student,”) is the Canis Scoticus sagax, vulgò dictus ane Rache of Gesner’s Appendix; “the racche the whiche that men clepen the Rennyng hounde” of the Mayster of Game, c. xiiii. fo. 62.

Of the third sub-variety I shall presently speak under the Agassæus.

For further particulars the reader is referred to Gervase Markham’s clear, accurate, and entertaining portraits of “the slow,” “the middle-sized,” and “nimble hounds,” copied by this laborious compiler from the earlier work of Duke Edmund of York, above cited. He may also consult Ducange’s Canis latrabilis.

I am happy to refer to the Historian of Manchester, in corroboration of this opinion. Skinner derives the name of the Talbot from the position of his tail—Etymolog. Ling. Anglic.“Canis caudâ reflexâ præditus, credo ab A. S. Tægl, nobis Tail, cauda, et Butan extrà, ultrà, foràs!”

Ancient sportsmen were equally aware with their modern descendants of the necessity of keeping hounds, when once entered, steady to their particular game. Plutarch (περὶ πολυπραγμοσύνης) alludes to the attention they paid to this point of field discipline: οἱ κυνηγοὶ τοὺς σκύλακας οὐκ ἐῶσιν ἐκτρέπεσθαι καὶ διώκειν πᾶσαν ὀδμὴν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ῥυτῆρσιν ἕλκουσι καὶ ἀνακρούουσι, καθαρὸν αὐτῶν καὶ ἄκρατον φυλάττοντες τὸ αἰσθήριον ἐπὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον.Xenophon De Venat. c. vi. Xenophon, passionately enamoured of the hare-chase, would not allow his harriers to turn aside, and run riot, after foxes—διαφθορὰ γὰρ μεγίστη, καὶ ἐν τῷ δεόντι οὔ ποτε πάρεισιν—it is fatal to their steadiness.

The difficulty of capturing the fox is indicated, according to Bochart, by mythologists, in the fable of the Teumesian fox, the “altera pestis” of Bœotian Thebes, which, in the song of Sir Arthur Golding,

“Men taken hem withe houndes,” says De Langley, “withe greihoundes, withe haies and withe pursnettis, but he kitteth hem withe his teethe as the mascles of the wolf dooth but nat so sone.”

Lonicer’s ratio vulpinandi in his ‘venatus et aucupium’ shows in its accompanying most spirited engraving the fox-chase of three centuries ago:

For the merits of the fox-chase, and its “commoditie of exercise,” see Sir Thomas Elyot’s ‘The Governour,’ Book i. c. xviii. and for “the flying of this chase,” see a Short Treatise of Hunting, compyled for the Delight of Noblemen and Gentlemen, by Sir Thomas Cockaine, Knight—wherein he states “that the author hereof hath killed a foxe distant from the covert where hee was found foureteene miles aloft the ground with hounds,”—a run that would be deemed pretty good, I suppose, even by the modern descendants of any Nimrod knight.

Nor is the etymology of the English term Beagle of more easy solution. Skinner derives it from the French bugler, mugire; and Menage thinks, as the hounds were sent from Britain into Gaul, the name may be of British origin.Skinner, Etymolog. Anglican. A second derivation is proposed by the former philologist, founded on the diminutive stature of the dogs—cani piccoli—Ital. Canes minores. May not a third possible source of the name be found in the barbarous root bigla, vigilia, excubiæ, from the Greek Βίγλα, à Latino vigilia—? The watchful tricks of some of our terrier-beagles in a rabbit-warren, and Oppian’s graphic sketch of the Ἀγασσεὺς, his wiles, &c. favour the notion.

Janus Vlitius, who, as Wase remarks, “owns England to have been the school from which he took the dictates of his learned commentaries,” relates the following anecdote of the tiny beagles of his day:Venatio Novantiqua. “Sunt enim agassæi illi adeò aliquandò exiles, et parvi, ut tres simul leporem in cubili suo invadentes viderim invitos à prædâ suâ, cui mordicùs inhærebant, nihilominùs eluctante relinqui. Et ipse binos nutrivi adeò delicatos et tenellos, ut manu unâ totos circumambirem. Sed hi commensales potiùs, et lusui magis, quàm ad venatum idonei habentur.”

A clever representation of a pack of small, long-eared, beagle terriers at their wonted sport of rabbit-catching is given by J. Stradanus, in his 38th plate, with an explanatory quatrain by K. Dufflæus:

Cæsar places the Segusiani in Gallia Celtica—“Hi sunt extra provinciam trans Rhodanum primi.” Why, then, may we not suppose these hounds correctly denominated by See H. Stephan. Schediasm. iv. 2.Arrian?—why may not their title be of local origin, as affirmed by him, rather than connected with their sagacious qualities, as supposed by Vlitius? who would view them as Canes Segusii vel Secutii—the latter term being applied to the Canes Inductores—“quia hominem sequentem ducit Inductor,” with which the Dutch annotator holds the Segusian to be identical. Spelman enumerates the synonyms of segutius, as seusis, sensius, &c. &c.—See Gloss. Arch. p. 114. and derives them à sequendo.Du Cange Glossar. in voce. Eccard more correctly, I think, refers to the German suchen, or rather Saxon seuken investigare, whence sucher, seuker investigator, and with a Latin termination, suchius, seucius, seusius, secusius, segusius, &c. The Spaniards, according to Wase, “have a blood-hound which is called un podenco,” of small stature, with which they “prick through the woods, or follow any chase.” Possibly Vlitius may have had this hound in his eye when he interpreted the Canes Segusii as Inductores.

There is no variety of sagacious dog, no style of hunting, to which the prefatory encomiums of Wase are more strictly applicable, (however quaint the language in which they are conveyed,) than the beagle tribe, and their various chases. “It is admirable,” says this friend of Edmund Waller, “to observe the naturall instinct of enmity and cunning, whereby one beast being, as it were, confederate with man, by whom he is maintained, serves him in his designes upon others. A curious mind is exceedingly satisfy’d to see the game fly before him, and after that hath withdrawn itselfe from his sight, to see the whole line where it hath pass’d over with all the doublings and cross-works, which the amazed beast hath made, recover’d again, and all that maze wrought out by the intelligence which he holds with dogs: this is most pleasant, and, as it were, a master-piece of natural magique,” &c. See also Gervase Markham’s Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. iv.

The swift-footed dogs of our third class are included, we may suppose, in M. F. Cuvier’s first division; having the head much elongated, the parietal bones insensibly approaching each other, and the condyles of the lower jaw placed in a horizontal line with the upper cheek teeth.

Having had an opportunity of consulting Conrad Heresbach’s “Thereutice” since the earlier part of this work was printed off, I may here subjoin the learned epitomizer’s description of the greyhound type:—“aliud genus Venaticorum, quos leporarios et emissarios vocant ac vertagos;—hos quærimus, qui sint corpore procero, agili et expedito, cruribus prioribus excelsioribus, capite longiusculo, neque carnoso sed levi, cruribus brevibus atque erectis, oculis micantibus, pectore toroso, cæteris expeditis membris, nisi quòd clunes latiusculos habentes magis probantur, et caudâ longâ et levi, non hirsutâ. Vidimus tamen è Norwegiâ et insulâ Thulæ adductos pernicitate non vulgari, qui et caudâ et corpore toto villosi erant. Verùm hi non ad sagacitatem sed ad velocitatem usurpantur. Ejus generis sunt Britannici, simul et pernicitate et robore valentes, nisi quod corpore vasto, cervis persequendis magis idonei.” The latter are doubtless Caledonian deer greyhounds.

This property, I allow, is impaired in certain modern individuals of the Celtic family, hereafter mentioned, in whom the admixture of nasal sagacity indicates impurity of blood, and degeneracy from the parent stock. The lines of Gratius, descriptive of the greyhound’s speed, and keenness of vision, have been already cited under the Sagacious class: Englished by Wase, (totidem versibus, the good man’s only poetical merit) they run thus:

Xenophon’s foxite has small ears, (unless with Vlitius we read ὦτα μακρὰ,) and Arrian’s Celt large, down-falling ears, as if broken—small and stiff ones being deemed a blemish in the greyhound. But in other respects the ears of the Oppianic hound closely resemble Arrian’s type, and also Nemesian’s—both confessedly Celtic. See Arrian de Venat. c. v. 7. and Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 112.

For a beautiful image of the Celtic greyhound the reader is referred to Père Montfaucon, L’Antiquité expliquée. Tom. iii. Liv. iv. pl. 176. A medallion from the arch of Constantine exhibits the Emperor Trajan with his huntsmen, accompanied by a type of this dog, the most elegant which antiquity has transmitted to us. It has been copied on stone for the preceding work by Messrs. Day and Haghe; who have added to our embellishments Chrysis and Aura from an ancient gem—Lælaps from Tempesta—and some spirited outlines from the antique. But I have most pleasure in referring my readers to the genuine Celtic exemplars—the veloces catuli—of the Townley collection of the British Museum, faithfully lithographed by the same artists. This beautiful group of greyhound puppies, in white marble, was found by Mr. Gavin Hamilton in the year 1774, at Monte Cagnolo, part of the villa of Antoninus Pius, near the ancient Lanuvium, beyond the “lucus et ara Dianæ,” of the Via Appia. A second, nearly similar, was discovered at the same place, and purchased by Visconti for the Vatican Museum. Of an earlier date, however, than these most interesting groupes, is the medallion selected as the frontispiece of the present work. For although the triumphal arch, whence it was originally copied, was not erected till about A. D. 300. that arch was a piece of architectural patch-work, made up of the spoils of earlier structures—its medallions and principal ornaments being derived from one 200 years older, commemorative of Trajan’s victories over the Dacians and Parthians,—amongst the former of whom, on the authority of Arrian, deer-coursing was an established sport in the beginning of the second century. About the latter period, or at the very close of the first century, the medallion of the frontispiece was probably wrought; whereas the Monte Cagnolo groupes, if executed expressly for the decoration of Antoninus’s villa, were half a century later.

I know of few other authentic representations of the οὐέρτραγος κύων,—unless the varying type of Dian’s canine attendant, on antiqueMorell. T. xv. 20. 21. &c. gems, lamps, coins, relievos, &c. (the most beautiful of which is on the Sicilian coins of Augustus Cæsar);

approach, in any instance, near enough to the courser’s hound to be deemed a likeness—sometimes a beagle, sometimes a foxite, at other times a greyhound, let the reader compare the outlines of Beger and La Chausse, seemingly of the Celtic type, with the lop-eared harrier of Visconti and Guattani, (Diana ed Ecate combattono coi Giganti,) and the prick-eared lurcher of the same authors, (Diana ed Apollo,) and then decide on the admissibility of the effigy in this place.

To the medallion of Vaillant, of small dimensions, but of singular beauty, exhibiting a brace of greyhounds in the act of seizing a deer—copied here in outline as a vignette—may be added four impressions of the same hound, in four different attitudes, most elegant and characteristic, on coins or medals of the isle of Cythnus, one of the Cyclades; and a stag pursued by a greyhound, in Recueil d’Antiquités, Tom. i. p. 219.

“The first greyhound,” says Topsel, (translating what Pollux had related of the Molossian,) “was that of Cephalus, fashioned by Vulcan in Monesian brass, and when he liked his proportion, he also quickened him with a soul, and gave him to Jupiter for a gift, who gave him away again to Europa, she also to Minos, Minos to Procris, and Procris to Cephalus, &c.

The etymology of this harsh-sounding term is more readily elucidated by tracing it in the Celtic, than in the Latin language; from the latter of which Henry Stephens, on the authority of Turnebus, attempts a fanciful derivation. “Vertragus—Fertragus—Fertrahus—ex eo nimirùm quòd feram trahat ad dominum, literâ g locum literæ h accipiente, sicut tragulam nomen à trahendo habere grammatici affirmant.” He does not, however, attach much faith to the derivation, though favoured by Martial’s Epigram,

and Turnebus himself, when proposing it, says “Scio ego jocularem istam visum iri audaciam, et risus excitaturam.” Ridiculous enough assuredly it is! The greyhound very rarely brings the hare to his keeper, often devours it—besides, the bearing of his game to his master is not peculiar to this dog, Oppian mentioning the same quality in the Ἀγασσεύς—

Seeing that this derivation could not be upheld, young Gerard Vossius endeavours to adapt his etymology to the little light which Arrian himself throws upon the name, deriving it from veertigh or veerdigh, nimble. But we shall approach nearer to the true root by referring to the passage of Gratius, in which the same dog is mentioned under the title of Vertraha;

Spelman, citing this passage, reads Veltrahum, and gives many synonyms of the same in the column of his Gloss. Arch. ‘de Canibus Veterum’—but all more or less corrupt. The correct term would be Veltracha, which has been changed to Veltrachus, Vertrachus, Vertragus, in which last form it is found in our readings of Arrian—Οὐέρτραγος. Du Cange suggests Velt-jaghere, campestris Venator, ex velt campus, and jaghere venator, as another probable source of Veltragus or Vertragus. See his Glossary, in voce.

The reader need not be informed, that in the term Οὐέρτραγος Arrian employs the Greek οὐ, as the nearest approach to the initial V—whether using the digamma (the V of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the F of Dr. Marsh) as his prefixture, I leave to others to determine.

From the term Veltris or Veltrahus is derived the class of huntsmen denominated Veltrarii of the court of Charles the Great, “qui veltres custodiebant:” of which class, at a later period, were the masters of the leash whom the lords of the manor of Setene, in Kent, furnished as the condition of their tenure to Edward I. and II. to lead three greyhounds when the king went into Gascony; “so long as a pair of shoes of four-pence price should last”—“donec perusus fuit pari solutarum pretii iiij d.” Neither Blount nor Strutt appear to have been aware of the origin of the term Veltrarius.

The Saxons used racha, and our oldest writers rache and brache. Thomas the Rhymer, the earliest of Scottish poets, has raches in the retinue of his elfin queen—Prophesia Thomæ de Erseldoun.“and raches cowpled by her ran”—and again in Sir Tristrem (Fytte 3rd.). “Raches with hem thai lede.” See Scott’s Glossary, in loco.

The old metrical charter, granted by the Confessor to Cholmer and Dancing in Essex, reads—

And the words rache and brache are of frequent occurrence in the Mayster of Game, the Book of St. Alban’s, and our early poets. See Blount’s Ancient Tenures, pp. 2. 26. and 104.

The term greyhound has confounded English etymologists as much as that of Vertragus has puzzled Latin commentators. It is variously spelt by our old English writers:Book of St. Alban’s. as grehounde by Juliana Berners, “a grehounde sholde be heeded lyke a snake”—greihounde by Chaucer, “greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight.”The Prologue. vs. 190. Lord Berners writes “grayhounde;” Junius, “graihound;” Gesner, “grewhownd;” Harrington, “grewnd;” and the latter contraction is of frequent occurrence in Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,

Dr. Caius’s derivation of the term, as spelt by R. Brunne, and the Sopewell Prioress, is fanciful enough:—De Canibus Britannicis Libellus.“à gre quoque grehound apud nostros invenit nomen, quòd præcipui gradûs inter canes sit, et primæ generositatis. Gre enim apud nostros gradum denotat.” Whence also grebyche of the Chronicon Vilodunense. §. 222.⁠[418] “Hym thought that his grebyche lay hym besyde.” The gre-hound andM. S. Cotton. Faustina, B. iii. fol. 194. gre-hound bitch being first in degree, or rank, among dogs; and no one under the dignity of a gentleman being allowed by the forest laws of Canute to keep such titled hounds. In support of the Doctor’s notion, it may be stated that Gawin Douglas uses gre for degree in his translation of the Æneid, and so also the prophet of Ercildoun, and the author of the metrical romance of Morte Arthur. In the complaynt of Bagsche by Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, a satirical poem of the ‘Lion King,’ on court favouritism, we have a farther example peculiarly apposite;—for the hounds, specified by name asLyndsay’s Poems, by Chalmers. “doggis of the hyest gre,” were probably highland deer greyhounds. Whimsical therefore as Caius’s tracing of the term may be, we cannot view it as utterly untenable.

By Skinner, ‘greyhound’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon grighund; and he farther remarks “Minsevus dictum putat quasi Græcus canis, quia sc. Græci omnium primi hoc genus canum ad venatum adhibebant, quod facilè crediderim si authorem laudâsset.” I know of no authority for so bold an assertion, except the doubtful tales of Hector Boethius, Fordun, and Holinshed, and therefore discredit the fact. Dr. Hickes says:Dictionar. Island. “Grey canis, extat in nostro greyhund. Comp. ex grey et hunta, venator.” q. d. a hunting dog. And Junius notes “quòd Islandis grey est canis.” Skinner, on the contrary, hints that the dog may be aEtymolog. Anglican. badger-hunter, “à grey taxus et hund canis, q. d. taxi insectator.” Thus Hickes and Junius bestow on him double dogship, and Skinner degrades him to a badger-hound. Well may we exclaim with Brodæus,Brodæus in Oppian. p. 123. “Vide quò procedat etymologiarum licentia!—ô joculares ineptias!”

The terms grewhound, grewnd, graihound, grayhound, Canis Græcus, and Graius, all indicate a supposed connexion with Greece. Grew is often used for Greek by Douglas and Lyndsay—(see the Bishop’s Preface to his Virgil, and the Knight’s apology for “The Maternal Language.”)The Monarchie. Still I cannot believe the genuine Celtic hound to have been known to ancient Greece. I would, therefore, rather seek the origin of the English name in the predominant colour of the dog;—Grey, gray, grai, grei, cæsius, leucophæus, canus, A. S. græg; which last, says Junius, might be referredF. Junii Etymolog. Anglican. “ad colorem Græcis γεράνειον gruinum dictum; proptereà quod Threiciam gruem simulet vel imitetur, ut loquitur Ovidius,” &c.—“Quid si deflecterem gray,” says Skinner,Etymolog. Anglican. “à nom. Græcus, q. d. color Græcus, ut color Bæticus ab Hispaniâ Bæticâ, &c. Teut. Graw.”—The varieties of the grey colour, of which Werner’s nomenclature of colours gives us between twenty and thirty shades suited to our purpose, predominate in the greyhound tribe, and more especially the bluish-grey and blackish-grey, (almost peculiar to this race and the great Danish dog of Buffon,) and all the dingy tints which under the epithet dun are found to prevail. Indeed it has been suggested that the line of Gratius, “Et pictam maculâ Vertraham delige falsâ,” may allude to the doubtful tint of colour, denominated grey, (compounded of two colours variously commixed in the Vertraha).—Venatio Novantiqua.“Videntur Angli canes hos grayhounds vocare,” says Vlitius, “id est subfuscos, vel nigro et albo mixtos quod nos graw dicimus.”

A curious remnant of antiquity in the British Museum, lately committed to the press, (for private distribution, to the extent of one hundred copies,) by that liberal and enlightened promoter of classical and British antiquarian research, both with his pen and purse, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., aided in the editorial department by Mr. William Henry Black;—to whom also the present writer is indebted for an accurate transcript of the Mayster of Game, copied and collated in the same national repository.

“The Greihounde of King Cranthlynth’s dayes,” says Holinshed, “was not fetched so far as out of Grecia, but rather bred in Scotland.”

From Hector Boethius it is clear that the Canes Scotici (qu. Canes Celtici) were superior to the native dogs of the isle: “Ut Picti suos canes Scoticis, pulchritudine, velocitate, laboris patientià, simul atque audaciâ longè inferiores animadvertissent: hujusmodi generis canum cupidi, ut penès se essent, è quibus nascerentur, quosdam utriusque sexûs à Scotis nobilibus dono accepêre: alios finito venatu, rege abeunte in Atholiam, à custodibus clàm abstraxêre, et inter eos venaticum quendam candore nivali, eximiâ pernicitate, formâ eleganti, audentiâque suprà communem canum facultatem, quem Crathlintus habuit in deliciis, insignem,” &c. See also Fordun. Scotichron. L. ii. c. xlii. (Regnante Diocletiano).

Julius Cæsar says of Britain, “Maritima pars ab iis incolitur qui prædæ ac belli inferendi causâ ex Belgis transierant.” Ptolemy and Tacitus confirm the supposed connexion of the Britons and Gauls;Geogr. L. ii. “Proximi Gallis et similes sunt,” says the latter,Taciti Agricola. “seu durante originis vi; seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, positio cœli corporibus habitum dedit. In universum tamen æstimanti, Gallos vicinum solum occupâsse credibile est.” And Juvenal tells us, in Hadrian’s reign, that British lawyers learned Greek and Roman eloquence of their Gallic neighbours—

Indeed, from the coast of Kent to the extremity of Caithness and Ulster, the memory of a Celtic origin was for centuries distinctly preserved in the perpetual resemblance of language, religious rites, and domestic customs and manners. As an example of similarity of habits in the insular and continental Celtæ,De Venatione C. xxxiii. it may be noted that Arrian records the marked adoration paid by the latter to Diana Agrotera; and Holinshed, on the authority of earlier historians, observes,See Note 12. of the Translation, C. xxxiii. “Amongst other the Goddes also, whiche the Scottishmen had in most reverence, Diana was chiefe, whom they accompted as their peculiar patronesse, for that she was taken to be the Goddesse of hunting, wherein consisted their chiefest exercise, pastime and delite.” Not being able to fix with accuracy the date of their irruption into Britain in the dark ages of our early annals, this laborious chronicler is inclined to consider the Celtic ScotiDescription of Britaine, c. 3. “such as by obscure invasion have nestled in this islande;” but subsequently, in his “Historie of Irelande,” he suggests a date later than the birth of Christ for the inhabitancy of the Scoti on British soil (circiter A. D. 300.), though previously in occupation of Ireland and the Hebrides.

Wernsdorf, who does not in general attempt to apply his poet’s instructions to any particular variety of hound, admits the Canis tiro, entered to the hare, vs. 186. seqq., to be of the Vertragus type.

It is worthy of notice that, whereas the earlier Greek and Latin Cynegetica recommend heterogeneous commixture in breeding for the chase—crossing the canine families of different countries with each other, under the hope of improving the pure indigenæ—Nemesian contends for parity of sort, and purity of blood, to supply the greyhound kennel, (“huic parilem submitte parem,” &c.); as if aware, with the modern courser, that the essential attributes of the Celtic type would necessarily be impaired, if not annihilated, by the admixture of alien blood. Arrian’s silence too, on the subject of omnifarious copulation, indicates a conviction of its inapplicability to breeding for the leash.

There are some curious remarks on the colour of hunting-dogs “fit for to course withall,” in chasing of the stag, in The Countrie Farme, B. vii. c. 22. p. 837. edit. 1600,—the reference to which is omitted in my annotations on Arrian.

Under the title of le lévrier d’attache, the French Encyclopedia unites the Irish and Scotch varieties.Encyclopédie Méthodique: Les Chasses. p. 290. “C’est le plus robuste et le plus courageux des lévriers; en Scythie on l’emploie à garder le bétail, qui n’est jamais enfermé. On en trouve en Ecosse, en Irlande, en Tartarie, et chez presque tous les peuples du Nord: il poursuit le loup, le sanglier, quelquefois même le buffle et le taureau sauvage.” The common English greyhound is le lévrier de plaine of France. The former sorts are the Lyciscæ of Savary,

Gesner has introduced into his Appendix a representation of the “Canis Scoticus Venaticus, quem Scoti vocant ane grewhownd, id est canem Græcum:” and calls itHistoria Animalium ex Boethio. “genus venaticum cum celerrimum tum audacissimum: nec modò in feras, sed in hostes etiam latronesque præsertim si dominum ductoremve injuriâ affici cernat, aut in eos concitetur.” SeeSpencer’s Beth Gélert, or The Grave of the Greyhound. “the Complaynt of Bagsche, the Kingis auld hound,” by Lyndsay, for a quaint description of some of the qualities of the highland breed. Poor Cilhart, too, the luckless wolf-hound of the precipitate Llewellyn, will furnish an early example of the mountain sort. Nor should the Ossianic Maida—καλὸς μὲν δέμας ἐστὶν—by Landseer, be overlooked, as a splendid type of the race on canvass; though not quite Celtic in his blood.

A breed of Sagaci-celeres is at present preserved in Scotland, between the English greyhound and Leicestershire fox-hound: the first cross of which is represented to be remarkably handsome, fleet, and courageous. This race is employed for the deer-chase in the forest of Athol and elsewhere.

The hound described in the Linnean Society’s Transactions is stated to have been only 61 inches in length—a size surpassed by an example of the Canis Graius of the purest blood and greatest speed, (“facilis cui plurima palma,”) 62 inches long, now in myDe Venatione c. v. possession—ἔτι γάρ μοι ἦν, as Arrian says of his much-loved Hormé, ὁπότε ταῦτα ἔγραφον. But it is probable that the beautifully-majestic animal, which assisted in extirpating the wolf from the sylvan fastnesses of our islands, was heretofore of far greater size than the writer’sDe Venatione c. xxxii. ἄῤῥην κύων τῇ ἀληθείᾳ γενναῖος—of whom he might farther say in the words of Ovid,

Indeed Mr. Ray’s definition of the Canis Graius Hibernicus makes him of the greatest size of the whole canine race;Raii Synopsis Animal. “Canis omnium quos hactenùs vidimus maximus, Molossum ipsum magnitudine superans—quod ad formam corporis et mores attinet, cani Græco vulgari per omnia similis. Horum usus est ad lupos capiendos.”

If the reader be interested in the arcana of wolf-catching, he will find illustrations, and anecdotes thereof, in Oppian. Cyneg. iv. vs. 212.—in the Venationes Ferarum of Strada and Galle (pl. 49.)—Lupos Venandi Ratio of J. A. Lonicer—La Chasse du Loup of Jean de Clamorgan—Mayster of Game, c. vii. fo. 40.—Turbervile’s Art of Venerie, p. 208.—Venationis Lupinæ Leges of Savary, &c. The latter author turns out his whole kennel and armoury for the annihilation of this “fera bellua”—even the anathematized lévrier is now admitted:

Derived from the Irish greyhound, and not very far removed from the original stock, was the gazehound of past days:

By Dr. Caius, he is supposed to be faithfully portrayed in the following extract:De Canibus Brit. Libel. “Quod visu lacessit, nare nihil agit, sed oculo: oculo vulpem leporemque persequitur, oculo seligit medio de grege feram, et eam non nisi bene saginatam et opimam: oculo insequitur: oculo perditam requirit: oculo, si quando in gregem redeat, secernit, cæteris relictis omnibus, secretamque cursu denuò fatigat ad mortem. Agasæum nostri abs re quod intento sit in feram oculo, vocant,” &c. To this portrait I can assimilate no dog at present known in this country, (though, it is probable, such might be produced between the Irish greyhound and blood-hound,) nor do the classic ages afford any counterpart to it.

For Dacier’s explanation of the “catuli fideles” of Horace—“seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus”—as des chiens qui suivent bien la bête, qui ne prennent jamais le change, so readily acceded to by the Delphin annotator, as portraying the English gazehound, is far too fanciful to establish a race of these “chasseurs à vue” in ancient Italy. Horace merely gives sagacity and steadiness to deer-hounds, or possibly the negative quality of not opening in pursuit of their game.