172 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



practised in Persia and Syria ; wliile numerous 

 descriptions of the chase have been written by 

 English sportsmen in India. 



In the Revue Britannique for October 1885 will 

 be found a very interesting article on " Hunting 

 with the Cheeta," written by Baron Dunoyer de 

 Noirmont, the highest authority in France on the 

 history of the chase. In this article he traces the 

 progress of this kind of sport from the earliest 

 times, and gives some curious details on the 

 subject, collected from various authors, ancient 

 and modern. The name Cheeta is the ordinary 

 English representation of the Hindustani word, of 

 which the modern spelling in European characters 

 is Chita ; the Arabs call it Fadh. The employment 

 of this animal for the chase seems to have been 

 known in the East from a very early period. It is 

 figured on Assyrian bas-reliefs in the act of seizing 

 an antelope, and is represented also on Egyptian 

 monuments dating about 1700 B.C., amongst the 

 animals brought in by way of tribute to the kings of 

 Thebes by the black tribes of the Upper Nile, led 

 in a slip with a very ornamental collar. 



The Crusaders found this kind of sport much in 

 vogue with the Mussulman princes of Syria ; and 

 the Emperor Frederick II., who made a journey to 

 Jerusalem in 1228, and came back half a Saracen, 

 mentions in his treatise De Arte Venandi both the 

 Cheeta and the Lynx amongst the animals used 

 for hunting. 



A celebrated Arabic writer on huntingr and 

 hawking — Sidi Mohamed el Mangali — a French 



