Part 72

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.”—“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:—

pars invenit utraque causas.

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—“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, 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,

—wrought the bane of many a wight. The countrie folke did feed Him with their cattle and themselves, untill (as was agreed) That all the youthfull gentlemen that dwelled thereabout Assembling, pitcht their corded toyles the champion fields throughout, But net, ne toyle was none so hie that could his wightnesse stop, He mounted over at his ease the highest of the top. Then every man let slip their grewnds, but he them all oustript And even as nimbly as a bird in daliance from them whipt, &c.

“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:

Callida versuto capitur stratagemate vulpes: Novit enim dubias mille dolosa vias, &c.

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. 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: “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:

Callidus effossis latitare cuniculus antris Et generare solet. Verum persæpè catelli Anglorum celeres fallunt pecus: ore prehendunt Illusum: prædam venatorique ministrant.

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 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. 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: