120 THE MASTER OF GAME 



taught to be couchers/ they be good to take 

 partridges and quail with a net. And also they 

 be good when they are taught to swim and to be 

 good for the river, and for fowls when they have 

 dived, but on the other hand they have many 

 bad qualities like the country that they come 

 from. For a country draweth to two natures of 

 men, of beasts, and of fowls, and as men call 

 greyhounds of Scotland and of Britain,^ so the 

 alauntes and the hounds for the hawk come out 

 of Spain, and they take after the nature of the 

 generation of which they come. Hounds for 

 the hawk are fighters and great barkers if you 

 lead them a hunting among running hounds, 

 whatever beasts they hunt to they will make 

 them lose the line, for they will go before now 

 hither now thither, as much when they are at 

 fault as when they go right, and lead the hounds 

 about and make them overshoot and fail. Also 

 if you lead greyhounds with you, and there be a 

 hound for the hawk, that is to say a spaniel, if he 

 see geese or kine, or horses, or hens, or oxen or 

 other beasts, he will run anon and begin to bark 

 at them, and because of him all the greyhounds 

 will run to take the beast through his egging on, 



^ Setters, from couche?'^ to lie down. G. de F. : " chien 

 couchant" (p. 113). 



2 Brittany. In Shirley MS. "England" precedes "Scotland." 

 G. de F. says nothing about Scotland. He says " Bretainhe," 

 meaning Brittany (p. 113). 



