62 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



l>le. They consisted principally of elephants, camels, 

 hunting tigers, and hawks. Of the former, many 

 thousands were always at command, and were em- 

 ployed in the wars, or in assisting to drive the more 

 ferocious and cunning animals into inclosures, where 

 they could be taken. Beasts of prey were taken in 

 this way, and were kept in royal parks, to be hunted 

 at leisure, or to be matched against each other at 

 public fights. The others were used in hunting, 

 and were equally numerous, with a proportionate 

 number of attendants. 



As among the Romans, the nobles and youth 

 here were also anxious to display their prowess in 

 the engagements with wild beasts ; but they were 

 brought in contact in a different manner, and in- 

 stead of meeting them in the hampered amphitheatre, 

 they were encountered in the field, after being driven 

 by a retinue of followers within a comparatively con- 

 fined space. We cannot resist inserting a descrip- 

 tion of one of these imperial hunts, in which the 

 army of Genghis Khan was engaged : it shews the 

 scale upon which such expeditions were carried on ; 

 and the immense slaughter of animal life will in 

 some measure account for the reduction of the num- 

 bers, and restriction of some species from many parts 

 of northern and western Asia, and the European 

 boundary, where they formerly abounded. 



" Genghis Khan being at Zermid in the midst of 

 winter, a season that prevented him from prosecut- 

 ing the war, ordered a great hunt, to keep his sol- 



