732 MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIERY. 



He taught to turn tho hare, to bay the deer. 

 And wheel the courser, in his mid career." 



It was the occupation of Nimrod to hunt and destroy the 

 wild beasts that infested the neighbourhood of Babylon. 

 Ishmael, the son of Abraham, by Hagar, his female slave, 

 took up his abode in the forests, where he became a skilful 

 hunter, and was the progenitor of the Bedouin Arabs, who, 

 to this day, lead a wild and unsettled life, in tents, amid 

 the deserts and forests, where they live by hunting, and 

 pasturing their flocks, which they drive from one place to 

 another, as necessity requires. We have also an account of 

 many who pursued this occupation, in the Bible, as well as 

 in the mythology of the ancients. 



The glory of being the first who cultivated the art of 

 hunting as a science, and the training of dogs to the regular 

 pursuit of game, is attributed to Pollux ; and his brother Cas- 

 tor was the first who broke and trained horses to the chase 

 of the stag. The Greeks held that Perseus was the oldest 

 hunter of antiquity ; but that honour was justly disputed 

 with him by Castor and Pollux. 



The Eoman jurisprudence, which was formed on the 

 primeval state of society, made a law of hunting, and estab- 

 lished it as a maxim, that as the natural right of all things 

 which have no master belongs to the first possessor, all wild 

 animals are the property of him who first takes them. This 

 law was afterwards reversed by the northern barbarians, who 

 overran the Roman empire. They brought with them a 

 stronger taste for this diversion, and having the means of 

 subsistence otherwise, from the rich and fertile lands they 

 had conquered, their leaders appropriated what before had 

 been held as a natural right to a royal one, which has been 

 continued to the present time. There is scarcely a commu- 

 nity OR earth, emerged from a state of barbarism, that has 



