ON COURSING. 



69 



endeavour to fill up : being his namesake and fellow-citizen, ^ 

 of similar pursuits with himself, as a sportsman, a general, 

 and a philosopher — writing under the same feeling that ac- 

 tuated him, when he thought fit to amend the imperfections 

 of Simon's work on horsemanship ; ^ not out of rivalry with 

 its author, but from a conviction that his labours would be 

 useful to mankind. 



Chap. I. 



In my opinion no proof is required that Xenophon was Chap. II. 



io;norant of the Celtic breed of doo:s, beyond this : ^ that the . Proofs 



» & ' J of Xenophon s 



nations inhabiting; that district of Europe were unknown, " ignorance of 



° ^ Celtic Dogs. 



7. See Biographical Notice of Arrian in tlie prefatory matter. 



8. Xenophon de Re Equestri, c. i. gives his reason for uniting his own opinions to 

 those of Simon, and filling up the omissions of his predecessor's work : " because his 

 friends would esteem his own opinions more deserving of confidence from agreeing 

 with those of so able an equestrian ;" and moreover he undertakes to supply from his 

 own resources, whatever the dedicator of the brazen horse of the Eleusinium at Athens 

 had omitted to notice. 



1. The two reasons in proof of the elder Xenophon's ignorance of the Celtic breed 

 of swift-footed hounds are quite satisfactory : the one derived from the limited geo- 

 graphical knowledge of the Greeks, the other from the comparative speed of the hare 

 and hound, as described in his manual ; which statement is just the converse of what 

 it would have been, had he been acquainted with the genuine greyhound. 



2. "AyvuffTU yap ^v ri tQvi] t5)s Eupciirrjs. The Greeks, in the elder Xenophon's 

 days, appear to have known very little of the western countries of Europe, and scarce 

 any thing even of Italy itself. It is true that there were, at that time, many Grecian 

 colonies westward, and through them a knowledge of the productions of the more 

 north-western interior might have reached tlie mother-country. But there was no 

 particular inducement for the Greek merchants to penetrate far inland : and th« Celts 

 had not as yet crossed the Alps, nor even arrived at any part of the coast of the 

 Mediterranean — any well-known country. The very distance at which the father of 

 history places the Celts, viz. as " the most remote people in Europe, after the Cy- 

 netes," is an indication of this fact. It is the opinion of Niebuhr that the navigators 

 of Greece rarely visited the unexplored coasts of the occidental seas. Indeed, the 

 interior of Gaul was unknown even to the Romans before the time of Julius Cassar. 

 Although they were masters of Romana Provincia, a tract on the sea-coast conti- 

 guous to Italy, they knew nothing of the multitudinous tribes spread over the country 

 between the Rhine and the Ocean ; which latter were not thoroughly known, nor 

 their manners and natural productions ascertained, till the visit of Augustus Caesar j 



■KipX 'Iririicfis, 



Geography of 

 Herodotus. 



