DANTE AS A NATURALIST. 365 



that Ariosto, in the last scene in the ' Orlando Furioso,' where 

 he is describing the Saracen pinned down by Ruggiero, says ; — 



" Come inastin sotto il feroce alano, 

 Che fissi i denti ne la gola abbia." 



This is all Dante has to say of hounds, and I will therefore turn 

 to their quarry. 



Of Wolves he often speaks ; they are to him the symbol of 

 avarice, either of the Florentines (Purg. xiv. 50), or of the Popes 

 (Par. ix. 132) ; nor could any animal better describe insatiate 

 desire that derives no benefit from getting. Two passages in 

 particular give one a perfect picture of the beast (Inf. 1. 49) : 

 She-Wolf (" Chi ditute brame Sembiava carca nella sua sembi- 

 anza"); and again he speaks (Purg. xx. 10) of the limitless hun- 

 ger of the "old she-Wolf, who more than all the beasts has prey" 

 ("Per la sua fame senza fine cupa"). We have a sketch, too, of 

 the Wild Boar (porco), which modern Italian keeps for the 

 domestic Pig, using cinghiale for the nobler animal. He tells 

 us of its tusks, and describes the noise a Boar-hunt makes 

 (Inf. xiii. 113) as beast and dogs come crashing through the 

 branches. Apparently they did not hunt the Fox, for the only 

 allusions to the Volpe refer in a general way to his cunning (as 

 when he speaks of thePisans (Purg. xiv. 53), but they hunted the 

 Deer (dama) (Par. iv. 6)). In an amusing passage he alludes to 

 it. He says his mind was so evenly divided that he is like a man 

 free to choose between two kinds of food equally removed and 

 equally tempting, who would die of hunger ; and so would stand 

 a hound between two does. Few now quote this simile, for to 

 our generation Heine's Donkey between two bundles of hay is 

 better known. 



Whatever Dante's enjoyment of the chase may have been, 

 there can be little doubt that he preferred hawking. According 

 to Plumptre this pursuit, which had been lately introduced into 

 Italy by Federigo II., formed part of Dante's education, and he 

 had probably read a copy of Frederic's work on hawking, which 

 existed in manuscript with hand-painted pictures, and must have 

 been in a way to that age what Gould's 'Birds' has been to ours. 



This we gather from the way in which he used terms in 

 falconry, and from the fact that by piecing together his different 

 similes we have a very fair picture of the sport. He says, for 



