io EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



then, we must be brief, and will here be content with 

 quoting the following remarks of Mr. Earle in his 

 edition of the Saxon Chronicle. " Now-a-days," he 

 says, "men hunt for exercise and sport, but then 

 they hunted for food, or for the luxury of fresh meat. 

 Now the flight of the beast is the condition of a good 

 hunt, but in those days it entailed disappointment. 

 They had neither the means of giving chase or of 

 killing them at a distance, so they used stratagem to 

 bring the game within the reach of their missiles. 

 A labyrinth of alleys was penned out at a convenient 

 part of the wood, and here the archers lay under 

 covert. The hunt began by sending men round to 

 break and beat the wood, and drive the game with 

 dogs and horns into the ambuscade. The pen is the 

 haia so frequently occurring amongst the silvce of 

 Domesday. Horns were used, not, as with us, to call 

 the dogs, or, as in France, to signal the stray sports- 

 man; but to scare the game. In fact it was the battue, 

 which is now, under altered circumstances, dis- 

 countenanced by the authorities of the chase, but 

 which, in early times, was the only way for man to 

 cope with the beasts of the field." Such, at least, 

 was the course usually adopted. Particular animals, 

 however, were hunted in a particular manner, and 

 to some of these modes we shall have occasion to 

 refer later. 



