Part 68

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

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.”

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.

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.

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;

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;

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

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, (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 Vlitius 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.:

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

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.