INTRODUCTORY RE3IARKS. 105 



the earlier Grecian era produced representations of 

 hounds with completely drooping ears ; those v/ith 

 them half pendulous are missing in the most an- 

 cient ; and this character increases, by degrees, in 

 the works of the Roman period. There is, in the 

 Vatican collection, only one statue of a genuine 

 mastiff; and representations of a kind of hound 

 with a small ear, partially turned downwards, occur 

 . in a statue of Meleagar, and in other instances ; 

 but, we think, in none so early as the Periclean 

 age. Of those of Imperial Rome, one also repre- 

 sents the Tuscan dog ; the others are British, Spa- 

 nish, or a Gallic hound, not noticed by Pliny.* 



Strabo first describes, we think, the British bull- 

 dog ; remarking the pendulous ears, frowning aspect, 

 and relaxed lips. And iElian, Diodorus, and Co- 

 lumella, mention dogs with procumbent and dejected 

 ears.t Notices of these characters, in writers of so 

 late a period, indicate an absence of the same cha- 

 racters in the indigenous races of classic ground, 

 and their novelty, at the time these authors were 

 writing. The sculptures of Takhti Boustan, in 



* We may point out those in the has rehefs of Nehalennia, 

 though we think they represent beagles, not correctly copied 

 in the engraved representations of that divinity ; a lamp sur- 

 mounted by a true hound, very late Roman ; a Diana in Beyer ; 

 hound, also very late pagan Roman ; a monumental relief of 

 Martia Euthodia, a Romanized lady, with a dog, whose ears 

 are cropped ; the Actseon statue in the British Museum is 

 grouped with wolf-Uke dogs, but the ears are restorations. 



f Dejectis ac procumbentibus auribus. 



