THE INDAGATOR GROUP. 737 



appears to have resembled the modern harriers and fox- 

 hounds, the Agassasus or Beagle, and so on. 



During the middle ages, all the nations of Europe were in 

 possession of Hounds ; but it was only by degrees, and in 

 certain countries, that they were employed in the manner 

 distinctive of the modern chase. They were used to find 

 and start the game, and drive it into nets or palisades, or 

 to bring it within reach of the swifter dogs, or of the wea- 

 pons of the hunters, rather than to follow the track of a 

 single victim, and pursue it, unaided, till the end of the chase. 

 Up to the close of the Anglo-Saxon dominion in England, 

 and amongst the Celtic Britons of Wales and North Britain 

 till a late period, this mixed method of chase, in which the 

 only end was the destruction of the game, appears to have 

 been the prevailing one, just as it was amongst the Greeks 

 of the age of Xenophon. When the fiercer game was de- 

 stroyed, and the deer only remained of the larger beasts 

 of chase, and when the deer themselves became scarce, then 

 a more refined method of chase was by degrees introduced. 

 Single victims were selected, and pursued by packs of 

 hounds ; but still the mixed method of hunting was the 

 more common. In England, until the reign of Elizabeth, 

 we can scarcely recognise any other in the accounts we 

 possess of the hunting-matches of the times. Greyhounds 

 were almost always taken out along with the hunting-dogs, 

 and either mixed with them in running, or kept in relays 

 to be slipped when the game came in sight ; and every ad- 

 vantage was held to be allowable for the destruction of the 

 quarry. 



The animals chiefly hunted were the native deer, of which 

 the swiftest, boldest, and most powerful, was the Stag or 

 Red Deer, Cervus Elephas, of which the male of a certain age 

 is termed Hart, and the female Hind. When this creature 

 is pursued, he stretches boldly across the neighbouring 

 country, stops from time to time to listen to the baying of 

 the pack, and then pursues his flight. But the hounds, 



SB 



