22 The Dog Book 



of the boar-hound. Diogenes is represented with one of the hanging-eared 

 dogs much resembling a pointer in general character, and on a silver plate 

 are two dogs, one a greyhound and the other a hound. Ganymede is shown 

 with a dog sitting by his leg, the dog having a studded collar such as Chaucer 

 described : 



"Aboute his char ther wenten whyte alaunts. 

 Twenty and mo, as grete as any steer, 

 To hunten at the leoun or the deer 

 And folwed him, with mosel faste ybounde, 

 Colers of gold, and torets fyled rounde." 



One thing could not be overlooked in examining these representations of 

 Greek and Roman dogs, and that is that they were of the same average size, 

 excepting only the molossian; and in this case, as the dog was a monumental 

 one, there is no possibility of determining the size of the original in life. The 

 dog with the youth may also be excepted. We have then at the Metro- 

 politan Museum over half a dozen dogs of this greyhound type, and taking 

 the men as being five feet eight inches high in life, we may estimate these dogs 

 at about eighteen inches in height. A six-foot man measures twenty inches 

 to his knee-pan ; and with these statues taken to represent men some three 

 inches less, and not one of the dogs standing higher than the men's knees, 

 makes them about the height stated. Compared with the youth and the 

 horse the dog shown on that cast does seem taller; but what is desired to be 

 shown at present is that, in order to accomplish more than the native dogs 

 when pitted against beasts in the arena, there was no need for the dogs from 

 Britain (particularly the one described as the Celtic greyhound) to have 

 been what we should now call gigantic or very large. 



We may lay it down as an axiom that no animals of even semidomesti- 

 cation will attain the same growth when running wild, and that at the 

 present time all domesticated animals bred with care are larger than at even 

 recent periods. It is the same with well-kept men. It is customary to think 

 of knights who fought in armour in European wars as veritable giants, but 

 when the Hon. Grantley Berkeley and a titled friend of his wished to par- 

 ticipate in the Eglinton tournament, held some sixty years ago, they could 

 not find in any armoury in England a suit of armour into which they could 

 squeeze. True, they were six-footers, but so we thought must have been 

 those doughty knights who met in tournaments of old. Travellers also mis- 

 lead us by using similes quite out of place. The first visitors to Australia 



