THE VERTRAGAL GROUP. 717 



whence the English term Greyhound. During the middle 

 ages, we have innumerable notices of the Greyhound, and 

 of the services in which he was employed. We find him 

 depicted on heraldric escutcheons, and sculptured on the 

 tombs of persons of illustrious rank. The "Welsh Princes, 

 by many curious laws on the subject of the chase, evinced 

 the estimation in which the Greyhound was held beyond 

 all other dogs. The Norman Princes of England carried 

 their passion for this animal to that excess which they 

 manifested in every matter in which the chase was con- 

 cerned. They founded prodigal hunting establishments, 

 in which the care of their troops of greyhounds occu- 

 pied a primary place. They levied taxes of greyhounds, 

 and, in return for gifts of these animals, commuted heavy 

 imposts, and granted tenures of land and posts of dignity. 

 They even sought to restrain the use of this kind of dogs to 

 the privileged classes, so that it became a saying, that a 

 gentleman was to be known by his greyhound and his falcon. 

 They enacted, in their forest-laws, that no greyhound, unless 

 deprived of some of its claws, should come within a certain 

 distance of the Royal Forests, shewing, by these and other 

 barbarous enactments, that the Greyhound was then held to 

 be the first in rank and importance of the Dogs of Chase. 



With respect to the origin of this swift and elegant class 

 of dogs, the same obscurity exists as in the case of others 

 whose prototypes we have been unable to discover in the 

 state of nature. We might reasonably suppose that dogs of 

 the Lyciscan group, habituated from generation to genera- 

 tion to the chase of the swifter animals, assumed by degrees 

 the conformation proper to this group. But it is more pro- 

 bable, that it is not to the Common Wolf, but to some of the 

 swifter Canidse of warmer countries, that we owe the true 

 Greyhound. Some of the Dholes of India, it is known, are 

 exceedingly fleet, and so much resemble, in their form and 

 modes of chase, the Persian Greyhound, that travellers de- 

 scribe them by their resemblance to that animal. But the 



