40 THE GREYHOUND. 



the dash and swiftness of the Greyhound on being slipped, 

 as rendered by Golding, supplies additional evidence of 

 his having been a partaker in the sport : 



" Scarcely had we let him off from hand, 

 But that where Lselaps was we could not understand ; 

 The print remained of his feet upon the parched sand, 

 But he was clearly out of sight. Was never dart, I trow, 

 Nor pellet from enforced sling, nor shaft from Creetish bow, 

 That flew more swift than he did run." 



From these ancient days we can trace no important 

 change in the dog or the sport till quite modern times. 



Coursing in England was, as already noticed, reduced 

 to a system by the code of laws regulating it drawn up by 

 the Duke of Norfolk in the reign of Elizabeth. From that 

 date the sport grew in favour, and not even the puritanic 

 spirit of the Commonwealth stopped its progress ; in fact, 

 Cromwell was himself a courser and an ardent lover of the 

 Greyhound. The next great public act consolidating the 

 sport did not take place till near the end of last century, 

 when the first coursing club was established by Lord Orford, 

 at S waff ham, in 1776. Four years later Lord Craven esta- 

 blished the celebrated Ashdown Park Meeting. The 

 following year (1781) saw the Malton Club formed, and 

 gradually such institutions spread over England, 'the great 

 Newmarket Society being formed in 1805, with numbers of 

 others of more or less importance, up to the celebrated 

 Amesbury in 1822, and the still greater Altcar Society in 

 1825 ; and ultimately, in 1836, on the plains of Altcar, the 

 greatest annual coursing event in the world was esta- 

 blished, " the blue ribbon of the leash " as it has been 

 called, the Waterloo Cup, now contended for every February 



