164 THE GREYHOUNDS. 



still repel all contact with dogs; while, in the 

 northern regions, where no such restraints existed, 

 the people were naturally hunters, and the climate 

 and habits would not suffer the presence of com- 

 munities of this race, the whole was absorbed into 

 domestication, and, with a part of it, crossed with 

 their watch-dogs, formed into particular breeds and 

 races, among which the Glaud Molossi (we take to 

 be our present ashy Danish dog) were then, as now, 

 the most easily distinguished.* 



Slaty and blue ash-coloured greyhounds form a 

 fine breed of the Persian long-haired race; and 

 these colours were common in the Egyptian smooth- 

 haired, as is attested by the earliest paintings, and 

 in the Mosaics of Italica. They prevail in the 

 purest breeds of the West, where the effects of 

 Albinism, or the opposite, black, have not been 

 studiously kept up. The last mentioned colour is, 

 however, in general, only an excess of the slaty ; 

 and it must have existed in Egypt in abundance, 

 since so many small effigies of blackish greyhounds 

 have been found in the catacombs. Yet we are in- 

 clined to believe these are aberrant tints, and that 

 the typical was tan-buff or sandy, for this was 

 the colour of the solar dog of Egypt, of the best 

 race in ancient Greece, of the English, and of the 

 ^reat Irish greyhound, as well as the prevailing 

 livery of the Indian, German, and other dogs of 

 later ages, where it is usually mixed with more or 

 less of white. 



Greyhounds appear to have changed the nature 

 * See the feral dog of St. Domingo, Plate 1. 



