CANINE HERALDRY. 
91 
this day, a great number of dogs, and these the most honorable, 
have refused any other employment than that of the chase. All 
the nations (I speak of the old continent) have in turn claimed the 
honor of having produced the first hunting dog. The Greek 
mythology alone has ten versions on this chapter. Some pre- 
tend that the race proceeded at first from a brazen dog, forged 
and animated by Yulcan, who gave it to Jupiter, who ceded it 
for a kiss to the beautiful Europa, who passed it to Minos, king 
of Crete, and thus successively. This brazen dog must have been 
especially the type of the molossus, our mastiff of the present 
day, dog of great heart and strong jaw, and one of the ancestors 
of Cerberus, so well known in history, who had several heads, and 
who eat Pirithous, the unfortunate comrade of Theseus. Accord- 
ing to Xenophon and Oppian, the discovery of the art of breeding 
dogs would naturally remount to the two children of Latona — 
Diana and Apollo — who must have transmitted their science to the 
centaur Chiron and to his comrades, whom antiquity considers, in 
fact, as its most ancient hunters. Others attribute the invention 
of the hunting dog to the two famous twins of Leda — Castor and 
Pollux. To Castor, the honor of having invented the chase on 
horseback ; to Pollux, the inventor of the cestus, the art of piercing 
beasts with the spear. Many Greek historians recognize only two 
races of running dogs, one created by Castor, the race of the 
Castorides, the other proceeding from the cross of the dog and 
fox, and called Alopecide, from the Greek name of the fox. 
I know no examples of the alliance between the dog and the 
she fox, though many, of his alliance with the jackal, with which 
the ancients may have confounded the fox. The dog attached to 
man, willingly consents to couple with the savage she wolf, but 
never the bitch with the he wolf, as rarely the mulatress with the 
black ; for the female, though in all species the element of fusion, 
is so only of ascending fusion. 
Every country and mythology claims the honor of inventing the 
hunt. Nothing is more natural. 
I have vainly questioned the archives of antiquity to find 
traces of the setter dog. I have appealed to the memory of the 
most lucid somnambulists to ascertain the epoch when this race 
