TRAINING. 71 



as to Greyhound treatment not quite so gross, but equally 

 untenable. Were it not that trainers are generally men 

 of shrewd common sense, who do not neglect the teachings 

 of their own experience, some of the notions they hold by 

 in theory would sadly mar their calculations. Lessons in 

 the preparation of the Greyhound for the course have come 

 to us from Arrian. In our own tongue De Langley wrote 

 on the subject five hundred years since, and Turberville, 

 Gervase Markham, and others, followed centuries later. 

 In the present century we have had the benefit of the 

 experience, preserved in type, of Goodlake, Thacker, 

 " Stonehenge," and others less known to fame. 



Although instructions as to feeding and some general 

 rules as to management are met with in the older writers, 

 yet the severely systematic training now practised is quite 

 modern. Writing in 1803, the author of the " Sports- 

 man's Cabinet," himself a veteran sportsman, and writing 

 over that nom de plume, whilst giving credit to Mr. Swin- 

 fen's system, which was to give the dogs a brisk gallop 

 twice a day, instead of letting them run at a hare as 

 was the common custom, yet goes on to say : " The train- 

 ing gentlemen of Newmarket, who are universally admitted 

 to know full as much as they ought to do, make no 

 scruple of giving an opinion that training a Greyhound 

 may be brought to as great a certainty as training a 

 horse. The long experienced writer is of a different 

 opinion, feeling himself justified, by ten years' observation, 

 in conceiving these speculative gentlemen are too rapid 

 and uncertain in their declarations." 



Practical experience, however, has since conclusively 

 shown that the speculative training gentlemen of New- 



