716 THE DOG. 



we cannot refer to any other type but this. In many coun- 

 tries of the East, Greyhounds are very numerous. They 

 abound, and have abounded, in every known age in Persia ; 

 and they extend into the countries beyond the Indus. They 

 are in the possession of all the nomadic tribes of Western 

 Tartars, who use them largely in the chase ; and they extend 

 northward into Siberia, westward into Asia Minor, Syria, 

 Arabia, and Northern Africa, and all over the temperate 

 countries of Europe. They were known to the Greeks, as 

 their medals and sculptures evince. But it is remarkable 

 that Xenophon, in his enumeration of the dogs of chase of 

 his country, does not enable us to recognise the Greyhound 

 as a distinct breed, though he speaks of the breeds noted 

 for their swiftness. This can only arise from imperfect 

 description : yet Arrian, in a long subsequent age, drew, 

 from the apparent silence of Xenophon, the conclusion, that 

 the Greeks of that age were unacquainted with the true 

 Greyhound, which, he asserts, the Romans only obtained a 

 knowledge of from the Celtic Gauls, whence the Greyhound 

 was termed Canis Gallicus or Celticus. But the Gauls and 

 other Celtae derived the knowledge of their principal arts 

 from the East, where the existence of the Greyhound is at- 

 tested by monuments of an antiquity far beyond the age 

 of Xenophon. Against the testimony of these ancient re- 

 cords, the opinion of the noble Arrian avails nothing ; and is 

 contradicted, besides, by relics derived from Greece itself, 

 which exhibit to us the figure of the Greyhound, that is, of 

 an animal which we should now term a greyhound, though 

 .of ruder characters than by cultivation it can be made to 

 acquire. 



Further, there is reason to believe that, from early 

 times, the Teutonic as well as the Celtic nations were in 

 possession of this race of dogs. The Greyhound is the 

 Windhund of the Germans, as he was the Gaothar, so 

 named from Gaoth, the wind, of the Celtic Britons. He 

 was the Grew-hunde, or Grig-hunde, of the Anglo-Saxons, 



