128 WOLF-HUNTING. 



hybrid the result of a cross between a hound and a mastiff, or 

 pointer; the puppies favouring the hound being rarely kept for 

 the purpose. Thus, this " canis ductor " is denned by Skinner 

 as " Canis vilior ex cane sagace venatico cum Molosso copulato 

 prognatus :" by which the mastiff blood is shown to be the 

 cross adopted ; but, if I mistake not, in Brittany the preference 

 is usually given to a Spanish pointer for that purpose; that 

 race being less addicted to throwing their tongue than even the 

 mastiff or Molossian breed. 



That the practice of commencing the chase by means of 

 lymers, or, as Seneca calls them, the " canes tacitae," should still 

 prevail in Brittany and other parts of France, after the lapse of so 

 many centuries (for the use of these tufters can be traced back to 

 a boar-hunt in Mount Parnassus, as described by Homer in the 

 i Qth Book of the Odyssey) would indeed be extraordinary if, in a 

 country abounding with a vast variety of wild game and endless 

 forests, the same tactics in sylvan war were not as necessary in the 

 present day as they were three thousand years ago. 



In England, with a single exception, the services of the lymer 

 have long ceased to be required ; the cultivation going on, and so 

 many of our wild beasts disappearing before it, the system has 

 gradually dropped into disuse. The Devon and Somerset stag- 

 hounds, however, still have their "tufters" and their " harbourers," 

 both of which perform duties similar in many respects to those of 

 the Limiers and Piqueurs of former days, and to those in France 

 at the present time. But that pack, under the able management 

 of Mr. Fenwick Bissett, is the only one now left in Great Britain 

 that hunts the wild red deer in his native haunts. Long may it 

 continue to flourish and represent the far nobler fashion of our 

 forefathers in their pursuit of this grand beast than that so widely 

 practised in the present day; long may those deep covers of 

 Exmoor, erstwhile the hiding-place of the Doons and the red 

 deer, continue to produce their warrantable stags ; and long may 



