FOREWORD TO FIRST EDITION xxi 



The Romans, unlike the Greeks, and still more 

 unlike those mighty hunters of old, the Assyrians, 

 cared little for the chase ; but the white-skinned, 

 fair-haired, blue-eyed barbarians, who, out of the 

 wreck of the Roman Empire, carved the States 

 from which sprang modern Europe, were passion- 

 ately devoted to hunting. Game of many kinds 

 then swarmed in the cold, wet forests which 

 covered so large a portion of Europe. The kings 

 and nobles, and the freemen generally, of the 

 regions which now make France and Germany, 

 followed not only the wolf, boar, and stag — the 

 last named the favourite quarry of the hunter of 

 the Middle Ages — but the bear, the bison — which 

 still lingers in the Caucasus and in one Lithuanian 

 preserve of the Czar — and the aurochs, the huge 

 wild ox — the Urus of Caesar — which has now 

 vanished from the world. In the Nibelungen 

 Lied, when Siegfried's feats of hunting are de- 

 scribed, it is specified that he slew both the bear 

 and the elk, the bison and the aurochs. One of 

 the early Burgundian kings was killed while 

 hunting the bison ; and Charlemagne was not 

 only passionately devoted to the chase of these 

 huge wild cattle, but it is said prized the prowess 

 shown therein by one of his stalwart daughters. 



By the fourteenth century, when the Count of 

 Foix wrote, the aurochs was practically or entirely 

 extinct, and the bison had retreated eastwards. 



