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TYPES OF GREYHOUNDS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C. 

 From Gnek terra-cotta vases in The British Museum. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

 THE GREYHOUND. 



' BY FRED K ' GRESHAM. 



" Let us swear 



That you are worth your breeding ; which I doubt not ; 

 For there is none of you so mean and base, 

 That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. 

 I see you stand like Greyhounds in the slips, 

 Straining upon the start. The game's afoot." 



KING HENRY V. 



THE Greyhound is the oldest and most 

 conservative of all dogs, and his 

 type has altered singularly little 

 during the seven thousand years in which 

 he is known to have been cherished for his 

 speed, and kept by men for running down 

 the gazelle or coursing the hare. The 

 earliest references to him are far back in 

 the primitive ages, long before he was 

 beautifully depicted by Assyrian artists, 

 straining at the leash or racing after his 

 prey across the desert sands. The Egyptians 

 loved him and appreciated him centuries 

 before the pyramids were built.* In those 



* A recent American writer on the dog makes 

 a point of his discovery of " a beautifully modelled 

 dog of Greyhound type from an Egyptian tomb" 

 preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. 

 We have scores of such beautiful models in the 

 British Museum ; they are not the models of 

 Greyhounds, however, but of the sacred Jackal 

 of Anubis. This Jackal figure is of frequent 

 occurrence in Egyptian monuments, and is almost 

 invariably represented in the couchant position. 



days he wore a feathered tail, and his ears 

 were heavy with a silken fringe of hair. 

 His type was that of the modern Arabian 

 Slughi, who is the direct and unaltered 

 descendant of the ancient hound. The 

 glorious King Solomon referred to him 

 (Proverbs xxx. 31) as being one of the 

 four things which " go well and are comely 

 in going a lion, which is strongest among 

 beasts, and turneth not away from any ; a 

 Greyhound ; an he goat also ; and a king 

 against whom there is no rising up." 



That the Greyhound is " comely in 

 going," as well as in repose, was recognised 

 very early by the Greeks, whose artists 

 were fond of introducing this graceful 

 animal as an ornament in their decorative 

 workmanship. In their metal work, their 

 carvings in ivory and stone, and more 

 particularly as parts in the designs on their 

 terra-cotta oil bottles, wine coolers, and 

 other vases, the Greyhound is frequently to 

 be seen, sometimes following the hare, and 



