THE CONFERENCE. 45 



Hunting is a game for princes and noble persons ; it hath 

 been highly prized in all ages ; it was one of the qualifications 

 that Xenophon bestowed on his Cyrus, that he was a hunter 

 of wild beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to 

 the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more 

 manly exercise than hunting the wild boar, the stag, the 

 buck, the fox, or the hare ? How doth it preserve health, 

 and increase strength and activity ! 



And for the dogs that we use, who can commend their 

 excellency to that height which they deserve ? How perfect 

 is the hound at smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his 

 first scent, but follows it through so many changes and 

 varieties of other scents, even over and in the water, and 

 into the earth ! What music doth a pack of dogs then make 

 to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set 

 to the tune of such instruments ! How will a right grey- 

 hound fix his eye on the best buck in a herd, single him out, 

 and follow him, and him only, through a whole herd of rascal 

 game, and still know and then kill him ! For my hounds, 

 I know the language of them, and they know the language 

 and meaning of one another as perfectly as we know the 

 voices of those with whom we discourse daily. 



I might enlarge myself in the commendation of hunting, 

 and of the noble hound especially, as also of the docibleness 

 of dogs in general ; and I might make many observations 

 of land creatures, that for composition, order, figure, and 

 constitution, approach nearest to the completeness and 

 understanding of man ; especially of those creatures which 

 Moses in the Law permitted to the Jews, which have cloven 

 hoofs, and chew the cud ; which I shall forbear to name, 

 because I will not be so uncivil to Mr. Piscator, as not to 



