THE GREYHOUNDS. 163 



personal danger; and, of all domestic dogs, we 

 may add, it is the least liable to real hydropho- 

 bia. All these circumstances taken together, seem 

 to fix the origin of the greyhound somewhere to 

 the westward of the great Asiatic mountain chains 

 where the easternmost Bactrian and Persian plains 

 commence, and where the steppes of the Scythic na- 

 tions spread towards the north. When we look to 

 the present proofs of this conclusion, and assume, that 

 where the largest and most energetic breeds of the 

 race exist, there we may look for their original 

 habitation ; we then find, to the east of the Indus, 

 the very large greyhounds of the Deccan, to the 

 west of it, the powerful Persian breed, and, to the 

 north of the Caspian, the great rough greyhound of 

 Tahtary and Russia ; and thence, we may infer, that 

 they were carried by the migrating colonies west- 

 ward, across the Hellespont, and, by earlier Celtic 

 and later Teutonic tribes, along the levels of 

 northern Germany as far as Britain. The primaeval 

 movement of the first inhabitants of the Lower Nile 

 may be conjectured similarly to have brought this 

 race along with them ; and all may have done so, 

 when it was already in part domesticated. But, 

 from the inherent qualities we have before noticed, 

 it is not impossible that an aboriginal independent 

 species, with the above form and instinct, followed 

 the moving nations in troops from- a voluntary im- 

 pulse, hung around their camps, as it did during 

 the march of Israel towards Palestine, and was 

 only rarely and partially domesticated among tbo 

 southern nations^ whose religious tenets in general 



