98 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



forest, until the huntsman, who held it by a length- 

 ened lyemme, or leash, came upon the lair of the 

 animal.* It is, however, likely, that the Limmer 

 is meant, for the two races are confounded; and 

 the last mentioned was the most common. 



Of the Indici, or Indian dogs, hy Aristotle re- 

 ported to he a hybrid race between the dog and 

 tiger, we may conjecture, as this intermixture is 

 physiologically inadmissible, that the Greek philo- 

 sopher trusted reports conveyed to him from the 

 east, and originating either in the love of the mar- 

 vellous, which oriental nations constantly betray, or 

 in the misapprehension of terms used in the descrip- 

 tion of the spotted, or brindled parent animal, by 

 the Greeks understood to be a tiger or a panther ; 

 when the words of the natives, which conveyed this 

 idea, may have confounded the hunting-leopard 

 with a brindled canine of the woods, such as the 

 Lyciscm tigris, we have already noticed ; or a spe- 

 cies of Lycaon (Canis pictus\ of central Asia, now 

 lost by absorption in the mastiff race ; or in a 

 broad-mouthed spotted, or brindled dog, nearly 

 allied to it, then called the Lybian Matagonian, and 

 formerly also about the temples of Ceylon ; t for 



* It is also written Limer, when the blood-hound is in- 

 tended ; and Limmer anciently signified another kind, the 

 mongrel between a hound and a greyhound ; this was let slip 

 to pursue the game at sight, and retrieve it by the nose when 

 lost ; but the blood-hound was not slipped, he led the hunts- 

 man in silence. 



t Indi coitus tempore in Saltibus canes fseminas reliqunt ut 



