Part 28

[Sidenote: Preface to the Reader.]

To Père Montfaucon we are indebted for a few copies from the antique of the larger varieties of nets for hunting, δίκτυα, retia; see his plates of stag-hunting: but we have no representations of other predatory instruments in the latter work. Wase confounds the laquei curraces with the dentatæ pedicæ, where he describes the former as “a round hoop of yeughen wood made of boughs, which stood bent by force, in fashion of a coronet, and all stuck with iron nayles, and wooden pins,” &c. Peradventure, they may have been set together, the gins in a shallow pit beneath the nooses, more superficially placed on the ground. See Xenoph. de Venat. c. +ix.+ Polluc. Onom. L. +v.+ c. +iv.+

It is remarkable that this inventive genius is noticed by no other writer; high as his character stands with the Faliscian,

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 103.]

haud illo quisquam se justior egit, Aut fuit in terris Divôm observantior alter:

[Sidenote: Excursus +ii.+ ad Gratii vs. 103.]

unless indeed he be the sly coadjutor of Alebion, who with a thief cleped Dercylus (of a different caste seemingly from the Gratian hero) despoiled Hercules of his bovine booty during its transit through Iberia. See Natal. Comes, Mytholog. L. +vii.+ Perhaps we may with Wernsdorf consider him the first writer on the science and mechanism of the chase, rather than the actual inventor of its multifarious furniture: or if we cannot thus dispose of his claim to manual dexterity, may we not identify him with Aristæus, the Arcadian nephew of Diana,

[Sidenote: Apollon. Argonaut. L. +ii.+ 508.]

ὃν καλέουσιν ἀγρέα καὶ νόμιον,

a sort of legendary Sir Tristrem in ancient matters of venery, and rural economy.

[Sidenote: The Governour.]

The decay of archery in England is feelingly deplored by Sir Thomas Elyot, because “in shotyng is a double utilitee:” it is “the feate, wherby Englyshmen have been moste dradde and had in estimation with outwarde princes, as wel enemyes as alies,” &c.; and secondly in “kyllynge of deere, wylde foule, and other game, there is both profyte and pleasure above any other artyllery.”

Superior expertness in the chase—“To bend the bow, and aim unerring darts,”—was always attributed to the personal instructions of Diana; so was Scamandrius taught, though his skill availed him nothing before the fatal lance of Menelaus:

[Sidenote: Iliad. L. +v.+ 51.]

ἐσθλὸν θηρητῆρα δίδαξε γὰρ Ἄρτεμις αὐτὴ βάλλειν ἄγρια πάντα, τά τε τρέφει οὔρεσιν ὕλη. ἀλλ’ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμ’ Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα, οὐδὲ ἑκηβολίαι, ᾗσιν τὸ πρίν γ’ ἐκέκαστο.

[Sidenote: Schol. ad Theocrit. Id. +iv.+]

The λαγωβόλον of Theocritus Idyll. +iv.+ 49. +vii.+ 128. epigr. +ii.+ 3. (ξύλον, ᾧ διαφεύγοντες οἱ λαγωοὶ βάλλονται,) seems to be the type of Bargæus’s weapon—the lagobolion of Natalis Comes. De Venat. L. +i.+

Additional evidence of the attendance of servants being usual at hunting expeditions, is afforded by the tale of Cephalus,

[Sidenote: Ovid. Metam. L. +vii.+ 805.]

Venatum in silvis juveniliter ire solebam; Nec mecum famulos, nec equos, nec naribus acres Ire canes, nec lina sequi nodosa sinebam. Tutus eram jaculo, &c.

[Sidenote: Preface to the Reader. Gratius Englished, &c. by C. Wase.]

The hunting of the ancient Hebrews appears not to have differed materially from that of the Pagan world. “Canaan,” observes Wase, “was hemmed in with deserts: there was the great Lebanon, and there was Mizpeh, and Tabor, and other mountains which abounded with game; and in the royall age, I beleeve, hunting itself was much frequented; for though the sacred history do not ex professo take care to deliver us any thing concerning those lighter recreations, yet the frequent representations made by it throughout the writters of that age, do give some probability that it was a frequent object among them, and taken from the common use. David’s persecutions are sometimes likened to fowling, oftentimes to hunting: his enemies dig a pit for him, they set a snare to catch his feet. No authors of human learning, whose works yet survive, make so much mention of grins as the Psalmes have made: his enemies bend their bow, and make their arrows ready upon the string, to shoot at the righteous. This was Esau’s artillery. So that according to that age, limiting was so instituted; for our author, speaking of these two, intimates that they were courses of an elder date, for Ginns saith he,

Nam fuit et laqueis aliquis curracibus usus: Cervino jussêre magis, &c.

He saith likewise for bows and arrows,

Magnum opus et celeres quondam fecêre sagittæ.

[Sidenote: Psalm +cxl.+ 5.]

[Sidenote: Job c. +xviii.+]

[Sidenote: Isaiah c. +xxiv.+]

David’s enemies hide a net for him. ‘The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the way side; they have set grins for me.’ Neither was it unknown to the Jewish huntsmen the way of driving beasts, by an immission of fear, which is the formido et pinnatum,” &c. The biblical scholar will remember the memorable passage of the book of Job, “the steps of his strength shall be straitened, (Gr. hunted,) and his own counsel shall cast him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare. The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail against him (the entangling cord or noose holdeth him fast). The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way. Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.” In the prophet Isaiah almost all the methods of capture given in the Classic Cynegetica contribute their metaphorical signification. “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare.” See also Jeremiah c. +xlviii.+ and Ezekiel c. +xix.+ the παγίδες θανάτου of the lxx. version of proverbs +xxi.+ 1. may be compared to the “mortis laquei” of Horace, L. +iii.+ od. +xxiv.+ vs. 8. and to the “leti plagæ” of Statius Silv. V. +i.+ vs. 155.

[Sidenote: Bochart. Hierozoic. L. +ii.+ c. +lvi.+]

It is a curious fact, that in the Hebrew text of the Scriptures there is no allusion whatever to hunting with dogs. Nimrod is called in the Greek version γίγας κυνηγὸς, Genesis +x.+ 9., and Esau ἄνθρωπος εἰδὼς κυνηγεῖν, genesis +xxv.+ 27.; but in the Hebrew, there is no reference to the employment of the dog. The canis lumbis tenuibus, quo ad venationem utuntur venatores, introduced by commentators, Proverbs +xxx.+ 31., I believe to be a fanciful rabbinical creation. See a note on the subject in the prefatory matter to my translation of Arrian.

The exceptions to this geographical nomenclature are only four, viz. the Vertragus, otherwise called the Celtic or Gallic hound; the Metagon, a lime-hound; the Agassæus; and Petronius: the origin of which two latter names is uncertain. The sub-varieties of the Cretan, mentioned by Arrian and Julius Pollux, may also constitute exceptions to the general rule; but these, with the Menelaides and Harmodii, Castorii and Alopecides, must be considered as merging in the more general titles of Crete and Lacedæmon: and so likewise the porter and pastoral dogs, and others deriving their names from their vocations, in the topical appellatives of their respective countries.

[Sidenote: Hesiod. Theog. vs. 308.]

ἡ δ’ ὑποκυσσαμένη, τέκετο κρατερόφρονα τέκνα. Ὄρθρον μὲν πρῶτον κύνα γείνατο Γηρυονῆϊ δεύτερον αὖτις ἔτικτεν ἀμήχανον, οὔτι φατειὸν, Κέρβερον ὠμηστὴν, ἀΐδεω κύνα χαλκεόφωνον, πεντήκοντα κάρηνον, ἀναιδέα τε, κρατερόν τε.

[Sidenote: Lucian. Deor. Dial. Juno et Latona.]

With the aid of the poet I shall hereafter venture an opinion on the breed of some of the pack of the stag-like huntsman—the most celebrated of the trio—slain by command of Dian: ἐπεὶ ἔμαθε ὀφθεῖσα ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀκταίωνος, φοβηθεῖσα μὴ ὁ νεανίσκος ἐξαγορεύσῃ τὸ αἶσχος αὐτῆς, ἐπαφῆκεν αὐτῷ τοὺς κύνας. See J. Sarisber. Policrat. L. +i.+ c. +iv.+ for the moral of this tale.

[Sidenote: Minshæi Emend. p. 242. Book of St. Alban’s.]

[Sidenote: Holinshed’s Description of Britaine. B. +iii.+ c. 13.]

The μελιταῖα κυνίδια were so called, “quia ad fœminarum delicias ex Melito insulâ advehebantur:”—the “smalle ladyes popees that here awaye the flees” of Juliana Berners—“Instruments of folly to play and dally withal, in trifling away the treasure of time, to wythdrawe theyr mindes from more commendable exercises, and to content theyr corrupt concupiscences wyth vaine disport, a silly poore shift to shun theyr irkesome ydlenesse.”

[Sidenote: Antiq. Sept. et Celt. Keysler. s. +ii.+ c. +ii.+ 6.]

A passage which Wase supposes to allude to the canis Gallicus of Arrian; whose impetuosity of course, and entire want of scent, his peculiar characteristics, resemble the heedless, rash, and head-strong ardour of the Gallic character in general, (Ælian. V. H. L. +xii.+ c. 23.) and particularly of the Gallic soldiers of Lucan’s Pharsalia:

[Sidenote: Lucan. L. +i.+ p. 19. Ed. Farnab.]

quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget lethi metus; inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona viris, animæque capaces Mortis: et ignavum redituræ parcere vitæ.

But an allusion to the war-dogs of Celtica, the “diversi Celtæ” of vs. 156. of the Cynegeticon, seems equally tenable. At the same time, it is not impossible but that both passages may refer to greyhounds, under the names of Galli and Celtæ.

In the muster-roll of Actæon’s pack by Gratius’s contemporary, amidst various sorts of hounds culled from various countries, the same characteristic distinctions predominate: we have a

[Sidenote: Ovid. Met. L. +iii.+ 211.]

trux cum Lælape Theron, Et pedibus Pterelas, et naribus utilis Agre.

The same threefold division runs through many of the modern semi-classical Cynegetica—being founded, as of course it is, in the essential qualities of the canine race:

[Sidenote: Joan. Darcii Venusini Canes.]

Nunc age quis villæ melior, gregibusque tuendis; Quæ volucri soboles cursu, nasove sagaci Sit potior; nec enim solers dedit omnibus unum Natura ingenium.

[Sidenote: De Quad. Digit. Vivip. L. +iii.+]

Ulysses Aldrovandus, in the section of his elaborate work which treats of the canine race, uses the very words of Seneca before cited, to mark the “tres præcipuæ canibus venaticis proprietates—sagacitas, cursus, audacia.”

[Sidenote: Vanierii Præd. Rust. L. +iv.+]

Sed non una canum species: pars nata domorum Excubiis, gressum et mensam sectatur herilem: Venandi studiosa feras pars alite cursu Insequitur, vel nare sagax vestigat odorâ.

Painter’s Palace of Pleasure amusingly works out the points of resemblance in the field-array of an army and a hunt;—“... by the pursuite of Beastes, sleyghts of warre bee observed: The Houndes be the square battell, the Greyhoundes be the flanquarts and Wynges to follow the enimy, the horseman semeth to gieve the Chase, when the Game speedeth to covert, the Hornes be the Trumpets to sounde the Chase, and Retire, and for incouragement of the Dogges to run. To be short, it seemeth a very Campe in battayle, ordayned for the pleasure and passetyme of noble youth.”

This fragment, highly Gratian in its style and subject, but long mis-appropriated to Ovid on the erroneous authority of Pliny, (L. +xxxii.+ c. 2.) is now considered, on the strength of internal evidence, by Vlitius and Wernsdorf to belong to Gratius.

Spirited representations of the different chases are given in Montfaucon’s Antiquities, Tom. +iii.+ Liv. +iii.+ from ancient gems, the Sepulchre of the Nasoni, Arch of Constantine, &c. See also the Venationes Ferarum of a later date by Strada and Galle, already referred to.

κύκλους, the rings of Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments, Book I. +i.+ c. 1.

For further particulars, see Xen. de V. c. +x.+ Oppian. Cyn. +iii.+ vs. 379. Adrian. Venat. vs. 55. (Edit. Ald.) Natalis Comes de Ven. L. +iii.+ v. 342. (Edit. Ald. F.) Cæsar. Borgiæ Ducis Epiced. per H. Strozam. P. A. Bargæi Cyneg. +iv.+ p. 104. and Iac. Savary, Syothera L. +i.+ A capital wood-cut of a boar bayed by ferocious hounds is given by I. A. Lonicer in his Venatus et Aucupium, Tab. Aper. and others in the Venationes Ferarum of Strada and Galle. See also the =Mayster of Game; of the wylde boor=, c. +vii.+

The reader will find descriptions of many of the different chases, for which I have no room here, in the Latin Cynegetica of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, cited under the boar-hunt of Calydon. For “the chiefe huntyng of the valiaunt Grekes and noble Romaynes,” see “The boke named The Governour, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knyght.” B. +i.+ c. +xviii.+

The lines of this animated picture, which describe, in the language of experience, the different degrees of restraint to be imposed on the Limiers, the Molossians, the Cretans, and Spartans, are here omitted: inasmuch as they will be more appropriately cited by us, when we come to speak of the family of limiers, the canes inductores of classical antiquity.

If the appropriation of the Oppianic portrait to the Vertragus of Arrian alone be deemed too scrupulously exclusive,—inasmuch as it leaves the Spartan hound of Xenophon undescribed by the Greek poet,—I will allow that preference of the Celtic type to all others may have influenced my decision; and am willing, with the reader’s approval, to admit the hound of Lacedæmon into a participation of the honour bestowed on the Vertragus.

[Sidenote: Venatio Novantiqua.]

In addition to this triple view, a farther distinction of the canine race is founded by Oppian on purity and commixture of blood. The mongrel or mixed breed is again divided into two varieties, the one constituted of dogs of different countries crossed with each other; the other of dogs crossed with various wild animals, θηρομιγῆ, as tigers, lions, wolves, and foxes;—whence in the opinion of the ancient cynegetical writers originated many varieties of hybrid races; which later experiments have proved to be founded in fable; with the exception of those produced between the wolf and dog, and the jackal and dog. It is not improbable that the latter hybrid production may have given rise to the fabled progeny of the dog and fox, the ἀλωπεκίδες of Xenophon; as the Canis aureus and common dog readily breed together; but we have no very well authenticated case of a litter from the Canis vulpes and dog—to which assumed cross, the attention of John Hunter, “magnus ille naturæ indagator,” had been directed before his death, but not advanced to actual experiment, as in the other crosses of the wolf and jackal with the domestic dog. Dr. Caius, it is true, speaks of the vulpi-canine cross as an established one, “quasi protritum aliquid,” says Vlitius, “quod ego rumore tantùm,” continues the latter, “et vix ita compertum habeo,”—but of this, more anon.

[Sidenote: Lucian. adversus Indoctum.]

Of these the most important are hereafter mentioned under the same or different names: The Παίονες, are Pannonians—the Αὐσόνιοι probably identical with the Tuscan—and those of the town of Tegea, (where Lucian tells us, the inhabitants exhibited the hide of the Calydonian boar—δείκνυσιν Τεγέαται τοῦ Καλυδωνίου τὸ δέρμα,) must of course be considered Arcadian sub-varieties. The rest are of the Molossian character. Instead of Ἐπειοὶ Bodin and Belin de Ballu read Ἀμοργοὶ; but of the hounds of Amorgos, one of the Cyclades, I know nothing.

Under the sanction of antiquity, and scarce inferior to the purest poet of the Augustan age, Ioannes Darcius comprehends under the terms Molossi and Lacones all dogs of chase;

[Sidenote: J. Darcii Venusini Canes.]

Quæ generosa canum soboles, quis cultus alendo Sit catulo, unde suos Epirus clara Molossos, Audacesque sibi commendet Sparta Lacones, Diva refer.

Such was the Pard of Ercole Strozzi;

[Sidenote: Cæsar. Borgiæ Ducis Epiced. per H. Strozam.]

Pardus ad hæc genitrice Lacon, genitore Molossus, Non extrema canum fama, et spes acris Opuntî.

[Sidenote: Bulletin Universel.]

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.

[Sidenote: De Quad. Dig. Vivip. L. +iii.+]

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.

[Sidenote: La Vénerie de Jaques du Fouilloux. c. +i.+]

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, (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.

[Sidenote: Venatio Novantiqua.]

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

[Sidenote: Vulgar Errors, &c. B. +i.+]

“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.:

[Sidenote: Poetæ Latini Minores. Tom. +v.+ p. +i.+ Wernsdorf.]

Hic sunt Albani bellaces marte feroci; Unde canes nati superant genus omne ferarum. Magnus Alexander missum sibi viderat inde Victorem barrique canem, rapidique leonis:—

[Sidenote: De Nugis Curialium L. +i.+ c. +iv.+]

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;—“Albani 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.

[Sidenote: Pind. Pyth. L. +ii.+ 85.]

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,

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 5.]

ἀμφὶ πόδας Φολόης ἀνεμώδεος ἄγρια φῦλα θηρομιγῆ, μερόπων μὲν ἐπ’ ἰξύας, ἰξυόφιν δὲ ἵππων ἡμιβρότων.

[Sidenote: Exercitat. 202.]

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

[Sidenote: H. C. Agrippa de Incert. et Van. o. s. et a.]

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

[Sidenote: La Chasse du Loup. c. +viii.+]

In the rare tract of Jean de Clamorgan, I find a practical remark to the point: “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.”

[Sidenote: Wase’s Illustrations, &c. of Gratius. p. 67.]

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 167.]

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. “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 upon 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.”