OEDER V. THE CAIINIVORA. G7 



For altliougli these, ami otlicr romantie cpisoiles of llie IJound Table, appear 

 at present in a form which they aequired in tiie eleventh ami twclth cen- 

 turies, thev are all extracted from mytiiolonical Britisii poems of the Pagan 

 period, and represent more recondite doctrines than tiieir present Arniori- 

 can tenor portrays. Sucli is also the fact in the tale relating to tiie 

 lirachct with the leash, whereon was inscribed the whole mystery of the 

 chase, wliicli, having strayed, and passed into other hands, caused a feud 

 among King Arthur's knights. These poems establish the antiquity of 

 spotted Ilunting-dogs, or Hounds, at a remote period in the East, and, in 

 the "West, reproduce them already before its historical era ; but disproves 

 tiieir British origin, and leaves the question of the pendulous cars undeter- 

 mined. Hounds, shaped like tlie present, cannot be traced in the tild 

 Frankish and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, they are all Coursing Grey- 

 hounds ; and this character is continued, with few exce[)tions, in tlic em- 

 blem of fidelity or gentility, usually couched on monuments at the feet of 

 the effigies of knights, to the last period of recumbent figures. 



We may therefore conclude, that the term Braceus, Braquc, or Brachct, 

 originally designated a sporting dog in general ; for sometimes a lady car- 

 ries one upon her palfrey, at others It follows a knight or page, and is 

 engaged even in cpielling a boar. The old St. Hubert Hound may well 

 have answered these purposes. 



Fnit tlic type of a true Hound being the Slcuch, Slot, or Bloodhound, 

 although it may have been found in Umbria, and there is little doubt that 

 it existed in Craul before the introduction of Christianity, we owe to the 

 East the great and improved breeds which constitute the present race. Tiie 

 Bloodhound, so remarkable for his tracking sagacity, was used in tiic fero- 

 cious wars between the English Edwards and the Scottish Bruces ; by 

 Henry VHI. in France, and still more inhumanly liy the Spaniards in 

 Pern ; and by Elizabeth, in the Irish wars, wdiere the Earl of Essex had no 

 less than eight hundred of them in his army. Even so late as the jNIaroon 

 rebellion in Jamaica, and Bonaparte's atteini)t to recover St. Domingo, 

 Bloodhounds were trained to hunt liiunan beings like wild beasts. A black 

 race of hounds was already estaljlishcd in the Ardennes in the sixtli century, 

 having been brought tiiither, according to legends, by St. Hubert, from the 

 south of Gaul ; we may surmise that it was derived from the East, for 

 Christian pilgrims of rank, on their return from Palestine, before the 

 Crusades, brought from Constantinople a white race, which they otfered at 

 the shrine of St. Roch, because he was the patron under Avhose invocation 

 persons suffering in fear of hydrophobia were supftosed to receive protec- 

 tion ; but tlie breed was no less called after St. Hubert, the patron of hunt- 

 ing. The black and the white were, most likely, soon regarded as types of 



