Part 7

[Sidenote: +Chap. XXXI.+]

[Sidenote: Food of weaned puppies.]

[Sidenote: Xenophon’s instructions approved.]

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

[Sidenote: Care of brood-bitches, not allowed to suckle.]

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. For when they have ceased 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.

[Sidenote: +Chap. XXXII.+]

[Sidenote: Estimate of Sexes.]

The greyhound bitch is fleeter than the dog, but the dog has more bottom than the bitch; 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, whereas dogs retain theirs even to the tenth. For all which reasons, in my opinion, a really good, high-bred dog is a great treasure—one that falls not to the lot of a courser without the favour of some god. For such a blessing, then, he should sacrifice to Diana Venatrix. He should sacrifice, too, whenever successful in his sport, dedicate the first-fruits of his spoils to the goddess, and purify his dogs and sportsmen, as regulated by the established rites of the country.

[Sidenote: +Chap. XXXIII.+]

[Sidenote: Celtic hunting rites.]

Some of the Celts have a custom of annually sacrificing to Diana; while others institute a treasury for the goddess,—into which they pay two oboli for every hare that is caught,—a drachma for a fox, (because he is a crafty animal, and destroys hares,)—and four drachmæ for a roe-deer, in consideration of his size, and greater value as game.

When the year comes round, on the return of the nativity of Diana, the treasury is opened, and a victim purchased out of the money collected; either a sheep, or kid, or heifer, according 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, according to their respective rites, they give themselves up, with their hounds, to indulgence and recreation,—crowning the latter on this day with garlands, as an indication of the festival being celebrated on their account.

[Sidenote: +Chap. XXXIV.+]

[Sidenote: Injunctions to the observance of religious rites.]

This Celtic custom I follow with my fellow-sportsmen, and declare no human undertaking to have a prosperous issue without the interposition of the Gods. For that Mariners, who regard their safety, supplicate the Gods at embarkation; and, after dangers escaped, offer up sacrifices of gratitude to the sea-deities, Neptune, Amphitrite, and the Nereids. Cultivators of the soil do the same to Ceres, her daughter, and Bacchus; Artificers, to Minerva and Vulcan; Professors of instruction, to the Muses, Apollo Musagetes, Mnemosyne, and Mercury; Lovers, to Venus, Cupid, Suada, and the Graces. And, upon the same principle, Sportsmen should not be neglectful of Diana Venatrix, nor Apollo, nor Pan, nor the Nymphs, nor Mercury, the conductor and president of the highways, nor any other mountain gods that there may be: otherwise their pursuits must turn out abortive, their dogs injured, their horses lamed, and themselves disappointed.

[Sidenote: +Chap. xxxv.+]

[Sidenote: Enforced by examples from Homer.]

[Sidenote: Iliad. L. +xxiii.+ 852. seqq.]

And of this, Homer gives evidence in his poem. Teucer, he says, the best bowman of the Greeks, in the archery-contest hit the cord only, and cut it asunder, because he had offered no vow to Apollo; 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,

[Sidenote: Iliad. L. +iv.+ 406. seqq.]

To omens trusting, and the aid of Jove;

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.

[Sidenote: Iliad. L. +xii.+ 216. seqq.]

And lastly, Hector, inattentive to Polydamas when he objected to an attack on the Grecian fleet, (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.

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

APPENDIX.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CANES VENATICI OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY.

——prima illa canum, non ulla per artes Cura prior, sive indomitos vehementior hostes Nudo marte premas, seu bellum ex arte ministres. Mille canum patriæ, ductique ab origine mores Cuique suâ.

+Gratii Falisci Cyneget.+ vs. 151.

APPENDIX.

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

[Sidenote: Cowper’s Task. B. +vi.+]

harmony, and family accord, Were driven from Paradise;

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

[Sidenote: Phil. de Animal. Propriet. vs. 8.]

καὶ θῆρες αἰδοῦς ἀγνοήσαντες νόμους, ὡς δυσμενῆ φεύγουσι τὸν πρὶν δεσπότην—

[Sidenote: Agrippa de Incert. et Van. Sc. et Art. c. +lxxii.+]

[Sidenote: De Invent. Rerum. L. +iii.+ c. +v.+]

[Sidenote: Euseb. de Præp. Evang. L. +i.+]

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: but rather consider hunting as an art of acquisition and self-defence of remote and undefined antiquity.

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:

[Sidenote: P. A. Bargæi de Aucupio L. +i.+ p. 13.]

Cœpêre in pecudes avidi sævire ferasque, Et nil tale priùs meritas captare volantes.

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:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 7.]

ἐπιδόρπιον εὕρατο θήρην.

[Sidenote: Tickell’s Miscellanies.]

Rude arts at first, but witty want refined The huntsman’s wiles, and famine form’d the mind.

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:

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneget. vs. 2.]

priùs omnis in armis Spes fuit, et nudâ silvas virtute movebant Inconsulti homines.

[Sidenote: Ovid. Metam. L. +iv.+ 699.]

[Sidenote: Xen. de Venat. c. +i.+]

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

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 Perseus—“Gorgonis anguicomæ Perseus superator”—(for I would not deprive Latona’s hunting-twins, Apollo and Diana, nor the worshipful race of Centaurs, φῦλα θηρομιγῆ, of their priority of claim, and patent of precedency, in the apotheosis of the chase,) who, when he had performed this redoubted act of courage, as we are told by the poet of Anazarbus:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 10.]

ποδῶν κραιπνοῖσιν ἀειρόμενος πτερύγεσσι καὶ πτῶκας, καὶ θῶας ἐλάζυτο, καὶ γένος αἰγῶν ἀγροτέρων, δόρκους τε θοοὺς, ὀρύγων τε γένεθλα, ἠδ’ αὐτῶν ἐλάφων στικτῶν αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα.

[Sidenote: Bedingfield’s Education of Achilles.]

[Sidenote: Callimach. H. in Dian. 105.]

As men in general, however, did not possess the speed of Perseus and Achilles, “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.

[Sidenote: Lucretii L. +v.+ 964.]

Et manuum mirâ freti virtute pedumque Consectabantur sylvestria sæcla ferarum Missilibus saxis, et magno pondere clavæ: Multaque vincebant, vitabant pauca latebris.

[Sidenote: Somerville’s Chace. B. +i.+]

New and unpolish’d was the huntsman’s art; No stated rule, his wanton will his guide. With clubs and stones, rude implements of war, He arm’d his savage bands, a multitude Untrain’d; of twining osiers form’d, they pitch Their artless toils, then range the desert hills, And scow’r the plains below: the trembling herd Start at th’ unusual sound, and clam’rous shout Unheard before; surpriz’d, alas! to find Man now their foe, whom erst they deem’d their lord, But mild and gentle, and by whom as yet Secure they graz’d.

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

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 5.]

Post aliâ propiore viâ, meliùsque profecti, Te sociam, ratio, rebus sumpsêre gerendis. Hinc omne auxilium vitæ, rectusque reluxit Ordo: et continuas didicêre ex artibus artes Proserere; hinc demens cecidit violentia retro.

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +iv.+ 100.]

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

[Sidenote: Lucretii L. +v.+ 1249.]

Nam foveâ atque igni prius est venarier ortum Quàm sepire plagis saltum, canibusque ciere;

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:

[Sidenote: Virgil. Georg. L. +i.+ 139.]

Tum laqueis captare feras, et fallere visco Inventum.

[Sidenote: Ejusdem 140.]

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 the Georgics—“magnos canibus circumdare saltus,”—redeeming thereby their esculent crops and innocuous herds from the ferocious and depredatory aggression of quadruped felons.

[Sidenote: Sophoclis Antigone, 350.]

Κουφονέων τε φῦλον ὀρ- νίθων ἀμφιβαλὼν ἄγει, θηρίων τ’ ἀγρίων ἔθνη πόντου τ’ εἰναλίαν φύσιν σπείραισι δικτυοκλώστοις περιφραδὴς ἀνήρ κρατεῖ δὲ μηχαναῖς ἀγραύλου θηρὸς ὀρεσσιβάτα.

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

[Sidenote: Adriani Cardinalis Venatio.]

machinæ, Mirandæ, horrificæ, minacis, atræ, Qualem nec Steropes, nec ipse fertur Pater Lemnius inferis cavernis Informâsse Jovi, nec ulla in orbe Per tot secula cogitavit ætas;

[Sidenote: Certaine Illustrations, &c. p. 25.]

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, are still in vogue in unreclaimed countries, and many of them yet practised on the continent of Europe—whatever 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, by 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; 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:

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 21.]

His ego præsidibus nostram defendere sortem Contra mille feras, et non sine carmine, nisus Carmine, et arma dabo venandi, et persequar artem Armorum, cassesque, plagarumque ordiar astus.

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.

[Sidenote: De Irâ L. +ii.+ c. +xii.+]

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.”

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 75.]

Sunt quibus immundo decerptæ vulture plumæ Instrumentum operis fuit, et non parva facultas. Tantum inter nivei jungantur vellera cygni: Et satis armorum est. Hæc clarâ luce coruscaut, Terribiles species: ab vulture dirus avaro Turbat odor silvas, meliusque alterna valet res.

[Sidenote: Wase’s Illustrations, &c. p. 7.]

The line of feathers of various hue, impregnated with artificial odour, “was drawn about the woods (——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.

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 85.]

Hic magis in cervos valuit metus. Ast ubi lentæ Interdum Libyco fucantur sandice pinnæ, Lineaque extructis lucent anconibus arma: Rarum si qua metus eludat bellua falsos.

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:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Hal. L. +iv.+ 586.]

ὧδε καὶ ἐν ξυλόχοισιν ὀρέστεροι ἀγρευτῆρες εἷλον ἀναλκείην ἐλάφων εὐαγρέϊ τέχνῃ, μηρίνθῳ στέψαντες ἅπαν δρίος ἀμφὶ δὲ κούφων ὀρνίθων δήσαντο θοὰ πτερά ταὶ δ’ ἐσορῶσαι ἠλέματα πτώσσουσι κενὸν φόβον, οὐδὲ πελάσσαι μαψιδίαις πτερύγεσσιν ἀτυζόμεναι μεμάασιν εἰσόκε θηρητῆρες ἐπαΐξαντες ἕλωσι.

Many notices of this instrument will occur to the classical reader in 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:”

[Sidenote: Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 312.]

Dat tibi pinnarum terrentia millia vultur; Dat Libye magnarum avium fœcunda creatrix, Dantque grues, cygnique senes, et candidus anser; Dant quæ fluminibus crassisque paludibus errant, Pellitosque pedes stagnanti gurgite tingunt: Hinc magè Puniceas nativo munere sumes: Namque illic sine fine greges florentibus alis Invenies avium, suavique rubescere luto, Et sparsos passim tergo vernare colores.

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.

[Sidenote: Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 300.]

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 slip-knot entrance), on attempting to pass out at the apparent opening of the ἄρκυς, they became by their struggles entangled therein—the purse either spontaneously, or by the agency of the men placed there to draw the necessary ropes, immediately closing at the mouth.

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +iv.+ 409.]

ἐπεὶ κελάδοντος ἀήτεω ταινίαι τ’ ἐφύπερθε διηέριαι κραδάουσι, κινύμεναι πτέρυγές τε λιγήϊα συρίζουσιν. οὕνεκα παπταίνουσα κατ’ ἄρκυας ἀντίον ἕρπει ἐν δ’ ἔπεσεν λινέοισι λόχοις.

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:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +iv.+ 382.]

ἐν δὲ δύω κλῖναν δοιαῖς ἑκάτερθε κεραιαῖς ἀνέρας ἀκρολίνους ὑπὸ μειλινέοισι πάγοισιν.

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 gradually 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. This mode of hunting is very clearly described, with its usual auxiliaries of noise and flame, in a simile of the Achilleid:

[Sidenote: Statii Achil. L. +i.+ 459.]

sic curva feras indago latentes Claudit, et admotis paulatim cassibus arctat. Illæ ignem sonitumque pavent, diffusaque linquunt Avia, miranturque suum decrescere montem, Donec in angustam ceciderunt undique vallem, Inque vicem stupuêre greges, socioque timore Mansuescunt. Simul hirtus aper, simul ursa, lupusque Cogitur, et captos contemnit cerva leones.

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:

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 25.]

Prima jubent tenui nascentem jungere filo Limbum, et quadruplici tormento adstringere limbos. Illa operum patiens, illa usûs linea longi. Tunc ipsum medio cassem qui nascitur ore, Per senos circum usque sinus laqueabis, ut omnem Concipiat tergo, si quisquam est plurimus, hostem. Et bis vicenos, spatium prætendere passus Rete velim, plenisque decem consurgere nodis.

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

[Sidenote: Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 299.]

Necnon et casses iidem venatibus aptos, Atque plagas, longoque meantia retia tractu Addiscant raris semper contexere nodis, Et servare modum maculis linoque tenaci.