THE MASTIFF FOR BAITING PURPOSES. 113 



John Evelyn, F.R.S., in his Diary under date June i6th, 

 1670, tells us : "I went with some friends to the bear gardens, 

 where was cock fighting, dog fighting, bear and bull baiting, 

 it being a famous day for all these sports. The bulls did 

 exceeding well, but the Irish wolfdog exceeded, which was a 

 tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel 

 mastiff, etc." Here we see both the mastiff and bulldog 

 mentioned together, as present at the bear garden. 



In a very old print (a copy of which an acquaintance of 

 mine sent some few years back to Australia) are depicted three 

 mastiffs and a bear, one is encountering the victim, which is 

 tied to a ring in the ground, while the two other mastiffs are 

 held back, fastened to pulleys on the wall. 



[ Such was the power and activity of the mastiff in Elizabeth's 

 reign, that in 1572, when Lord Buckhurst was Ambassador 

 for a few weeks at the Court of Charles IX. of France, he 

 owned a mastiff which alone and unassisted baited successfully 

 a bear, a leopard, and a lion, and pulled them all down ; and 

 this is not a solitary instance of one mastiff only being 

 employed. George Edwards, the naturalist born 1693, and 

 died July 1773, author of "Gleanings of Natural History," 

 relates that in 1615 an English mastiff killed a tiger in India, 

 in single combat unassisted. | 



In the Miscellanea Curiosa, published in 1723, it is men- 

 tioned that Moorad had a man hung for watching him baiting 

 a bear with a single mastiff. 



The Tower of London was for many years a National 

 Menagerie, from the reign of Henry 3rd. to that of our Sailor 

 King, for a collection of wild animals belonging to the Crown 



