INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 99 



this was likewise pretended to be a crossed race 

 with a wild beast. Several other races of dogs are 

 mentioned by the Greek classical writers of anti- 

 quity ; but we know little more of them than their 

 names, and with what breeds it was recommended 

 to cross them. But the cattle, and shepherd-dogs, 

 equally valuable in hunting and in watching flocks, 

 are described as by far the largest and most useful. 

 In this race was intermixed the blood of the Chaon, 

 already noticed. " Chaonides a Chao luporum ge- 

 nere non nulli existement." Cselius.* They were 

 of the same kind as the Epirotic Molossi, and most 

 likely the progenitors of the subsequent western 

 boar-hounds. 



The Eomans, during their extended empire, added 



cum his tigrides coeant : quarum ex primes conceptibus ob ni- 

 miam feritatem, inutilis partus judicant ; itidem secundos : sed 

 tertios educant. Solinus^ Polyhistor, Pliny, Strabo. 



Non canis sed tigris procreatus, et secundo ex hoc et cane 

 etiamntimtigris, qui vero deniceps et hoc et cane concipitur 

 canis est seminis, in deterius degeneratur neque hoc negaverit 

 Aristoteles. JElian, lib. 8. 



There may be truth in the mode cf breeding from an hybrid 

 race as above indicated, and that the infusion of strange blood 

 required softening down for two generations, without ex- 

 tinguishing the vigour the cross had produced ; for, of the 

 fourth generation of a cross with the wolf, the French king's 

 chief hunstnian reported to Buffon, that having tried one in a 

 boar chase, he was killed, by venturing, in the first encounter, 

 to grapple with his quarry directly in front. 



* From this root we may also derive the Roman proper 



