218 FOREST CREATURES. 



their accounts. " Like lions (book xiii.) carrying off a 

 goat through thickly-growing bushes, liolding it in 

 their bloody jaws Jiigh above the grouncV And even 

 as regards the part of the body seized on when an 

 attack is made. Gerard, speaking of the young lion's 

 education says, " Ce n'est qu'a deux ans que les jeunes 

 lions savent etr angler un cheval, un boeuf, un chameau, 

 d'un seul coup de gueule a la gorge ; " and Homer, 

 when the lion chooses a cow from amid a grazing herd, 

 " he crushes her 7ieck, seizing on it with his mighty 

 fangs." Indeed, whenever this animal is alluded to, an 

 intimate acquaintance with his habits and instincts is 

 developed. 



These allusions to the chase of the lion, the stag, and 

 the wild-boar, are taken from the following books of 

 the Iliad : iii. iv. v. xiii. xvi. xvii. xviii. xx. xxi. xxii. 

 There is the same feeling for the chase in each of 

 them, the same knowledge of the animal described, 

 the same attention to minute circumstances which a 

 hunter only would lay stress on or take cognisance of. 

 Without entering on the philological part of the ques- 

 tion, these facts would strongly incline us to believe 

 that the Greek epic was the work of one and the same 

 man, and not a collection of songs by different men, 

 which had been brought together and put into their 

 present form. If in our own day we were to find in a 



