2 28 Modern Dogs. 



what may be called the uncivilised period of our 

 history, were assisted by nets, and then by bows 

 and arrows, in taking the game, for at that period 

 there were few cultivated stretches of land, free from 

 forest, of sufficient extent to allow the long courses- 

 common at the present day. However that may be, 

 greyhounds pretty much of the shape and form they 

 are found now were known prior to King Canute's 

 time, when no one of less degree than a "gentle- 

 man" — possibly a freeholder — was permitted to keep 

 greyhounds. 



Mr. Gardner Wilkinson, in his great work on 

 Egypt, gives copies from the Egyptian monuments 

 of dogs used in coursing being taken to the ground 

 in slips, and loosened therefrom in the modern man- 

 ner, and no pains were spared to properly train the 

 hounds for this sport. Two of these are similar to 

 our greyhounds, though perhaps shorter on the legs, 

 two are more like our modern pointer or foxhound, 

 others resemble a Borzoi or Russian wolfhound, 

 whilst a fourth type is like a big coarse, smooth- 

 coated Irish wolfhound. These were the hounds 

 kept at the time of the Pharoahs. Centuries before 

 the Christian era Xenophon had used greyhounds for 

 coursing which had been sent by the Romans from 

 Britain, and Ovid describes the "greedy Grewnde 

 coursing the silly hare in fields without covert." 



