CHAPTER VI.

HUNTING AND FOWLING.

Among the sports and pastimes of the Greeks, which may be considered as a kind of supplement to gymnastics, we must class first the chase, which Xenophon vainly hoped might be made to operate as a check on the luxurious and effeminate habits of his contemporaries.[679] But each age having its own distinctive characteristic, it profits very little to aim at engrafting the customs of one period of civilisation upon another. The world will go its own gait. Chuckfarthing and Pricking the Loop might as well be recommended to young gentlemen and ladies dying for love, as hunting to the population of a vain and foppish city, to whom wild boars and wolves must seem certain death. However, the country gentlemen, and the agricultural population generally, long in their own defence continued the practice of the chase, though in Attica the absence of wild animals, consequent upon a high and careful cultivation, had reduced it at a very early period to a matter of mere amusement.

Footnote 679:

In the early ages of the world, hunting we are assured led to the establishment of monarchy by accustoming youth whose brains were in their sinews to pay implicit obedience to their leaders in the chase.—Bochart, Geog. Sac. t. i. p. 258.

But in remoter times, and in those parts of the country where game always continued to abound, there were never wanting persons who delighted in the excitement of the chase. Herdsmen, particularly, and shepherds, considered it part of their occupation.[680] Thus we find Anchises a young Trojan chief, who inhabited the hill country, making his lair of bears and lion-skins, the spoils of his own lance.[681] Sport, of course, it would furnish to bold and reckless young men, as lion and tiger hunting still does to our countrymen in Northern India; but from this recreation proceeded in some measure their safety, since where wild beasts are numerous they not only devastate the country,[682] trampling down the corn-fields and devouring herds and flocks, but occasionally, if they chance to find them unarmed, dine also upon their hunters. Thus the chase of the Calydonian boar, the tally-ho’s and view-halloes of which still sound fresh in song, was undertaken by the Ætolians and Curetes, for the purpose of delivering the rustic population from a pest;[683] and precisely the same motive urged Alcmena’s boy into the famous conflict with the Nemean lion,[684] which he brought down with his invincible bow and finished with his wild olive club. In like manner Theseus, his rival in glory, slew the Marathonian bull; and delivered the Cretans from another monster of the same kind.[685] He engaged, too, with a sow of great size at Crommyon on the confines of Corinthia, and slaughtered the pig, an achievement of much utility and no little glory.

Footnote 680:

Iliad, λ. 547.

Footnote 681:

Hom. Hymn in Vener. 160. seq.

Footnote 682:

Paus. i. 27. 9.

Footnote 683:

Iliad, ι. 547. sqq.

Footnote 684:

Theocrit. xxv. 211. sqq.

Footnote 685:

Paus. i. 27. 9. sqq.

The arms and accoutrements of these primitive sportsmen corresponded with the rough service in which they were engaged. Sometimes, to the attack of the wild bull or the boar, they went forth with formidable battle-axes.[686] But when their game was fleet and innocuous a handful of light javelins and the bow sufficed, as when Odysseus and his companions beat the country in search of wild goats.[687] In the Æneid, too, we find the hero doing great execution among a herd of deer with his bow. Boar-spears also were in use ere the period of the Trojan war, as Odysseus, who appears to have been excessively addicted to the chase, is represented going thus armed to the field with the sons of Autolycos when he was wounded by the hog.[688] With the same weapon we find Adrastos engaged in the same sport, killing the son of Crœsos.[689] The chase of the lion, which in Xenophon’s time could no longer be enjoyed in Greece Proper, required the most daring courage and the most formidable weapons, spears, javelins, clubs, and burning torches, with which at last they repelled him at night from the cattle stalls. Homer, as usual, represents the contest to the life:[690]

“He turned to go, as slow retreats the lion from the stalls, Whom men and dogs assault while round a shower of javelins falls. They all night watch about their herds, lest he intent on prey Should bear the flower of all their fields, the fattest bull away. Onward impetuously he bounds—the hissing javelins fly From daring hands, while torches send their blaze far up the sky. He dreads, though fierce, the dazzling flames thick flashing on his sight, And hungry still and breathing rage, retires with morning’s light.”

Footnote 686:

Iliad, ρ. 520. seq. Feith. Antiq. Hom. iv. c. 2. § 2.

Footnote 687:

Odyss. ι. 155. seq.

Footnote 688:

Odyss. ι. 465. seq.

Footnote 689:

Herod. i. 43.

Footnote 690:

Il. ρ. 657. Cf. Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 31. Oppian Cyneget. iv. 131. sqq.

The existence of wild beasts in a country has by some been enumerated among the causes of civilisation, and it may, under certain circumstances, deserve to be so considered, though generally such modes of accounting for things are exceedingly unphilosophical. Mitford, who advances it,[691] needed but to cast a glance across the Mediterranean to dissipate his whole theory, since nowhere are there more wild beasts or men less civilised than in Africa. Egypt, Chaldæa, Assyria, the earliest peopled countries, enjoyed few of these helps to refinement. The reasons of Greek civilisation lay neither in their country or in the accidents of it, but in the race itself, which, as one family in a nation is distinguished from its neighbours by superior genius, was thus distinguished from other races of men. However, the lion, as we have seen, formerly existed among them, though never probably in great numbers, and even in the age of Herodotus was still found in a wild tract of country extending from the Acheloös in Acarnania to the Nestos in Thrace,[692] where in fabulous times Olynthos, son of Strymon,[693] is said to have been slain in a lion hunt. In the age of Dion Chrysostom, however, this fierce animal was no longer known in Europe.[694]

Footnote 691:

Hist. of Greece, i. 16.

Footnote 692:

Herod. vii. 125. seq.

Footnote 693:

Conon, Dieg. iv. ap. Phot. 131. Rüdig. Prolegg. ad Dem. Olynth. p. 3.

Footnote 694:

Orat. 21. t. i. p. 501. Reiske.

Dogs, all the world over and from the remotest times, have been man’s companions in the chase, and Homer, the noblest painter of the ancient world, has bequeathed us many sketches of the antique hunting breed. It has above been seen that in company with man they feared not to attack even the lion. Odysseus’ famous dog Argos was a hound that

“Never missed in deepest woods the swift game to pursue If once it glanced before his sight, for every track he knew.[695]”

Footnote 695:

Odyss. ρ. 316. seq.

And again when the same sagacious Nimrod makes his rounds in quest of “belly timber,” a brace of dogs runs before him “examining the traces,” while with boar-spear in hand he follows close at their heels.[696] But already, even in those days, the habit of keeping more cats than catch mice had got into fashion—that is among the great—since we find grandees with their κύνες τραπεζῆες or “table dogs,”[697] valued simply for their beauty. Patroclus maintained nine of these handsome animals, and Achilles understanding his tastes, cast two of them into the flames of his funeral pile, that their shades might sit at his board in the realms below.[698]

Footnote 696:

Id. τ. 436. seq.

Footnote 697:

Id. ρ. 310.

Footnote 698:

Iliad ψ. 173. seq.

Footnote 699:

Deipnosoph. i. 22. et 24.

Fowling too, if we may depend upon Athenæus,[699] entered into the list of heroic amusements. It is clear, however, that the sportsmen of those days were arrant poachers, for, not content with attacking their prey in open fight, they condescended to spread nets for them and set gins for their feet. But being accomplished bowmen, however, they could occasionally, when pressed for provisions, fetch down a thrush, a pigeon, or a dove with an arrow, dexterously as that Jew in Eusebius[700] who exhibited his marksmanship to demonstrate the fallacy of augury. For in the funeral games of Patroclus, we find one of the heroes hitting from a considerable distance a dove which had been tied by a small cord to the summit of a mast.[701]

Footnote 700:

Præp. Evang. l. ix. c. 4. p. 408. d.

Footnote 701:

Iliad, ψ. 853. sqq.

They were given moreover not only to fishing with nets—a practice in nowise unbecoming a hero when in want of a dinner—but even to angling with “crooked O’Shaughnessies,”[702] as Homer expresses it; though the passage in the Iliad, indeed, where a net is mentioned, cannot well be adduced in corroboration, since it may refer to fowling as well as to fishing.[703] Certain verses in the Odyssey, however, prove beyond a doubt that the Greeks had already begun to derive a great part of their sustenance from the sea;[704] and the Homeric heroes even understood the value of oysters, which, as appears from the Iliad, were procured by diving.[705]

Footnote 702:

Γναμπτοῖς ἀγκιστροίσιν. Odyss. μ. 331. seq. Ludovic. Nonn. de Re Cibar. iii. 4. p. 294. Plut. de Solert. Anim. § 24. Cf. Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 36. p. 191. From an expression of Augustus, if we can regard it as anything more than a figure of speech, it may be inferred that to increase the luxury of the sport by converting it into a species of gambling, people sometimes fished with golden hooks.—Polyæn. Strat. viii. 24. 6.

Footnote 703:

Iliad, γ. 487. seq. Eustath. ad Odyss. χ. 386.

Footnote 704:

Odyss. χ. 386.

Footnote 705:

Iliad, π. 747. sqq.

Nevertheless these ancient heroes, though by no means averse as we have seen to pigeons or oysters, delighted chiefly in the chase of the larger animals, in which article of taste they agreed with Plato, who considered all other kinds as unworthy of men. He appears to have entertained an especial aversion for the Isaac Waltons of the ancient world, and in his advice to youth earnestly exhorts them to eschew hooks and fish-traps, which he slily classes with piracy and house-breaking: and so he does fowling. Nor would his generous philosophy countenance poaching with nets and gins and snares. His sportsmen, modelled after the old Homeric type, were to mount their chargers,[706] and accompanied by their dogs come to close quarters with their wild foes in open daylight, and subdue them by dint of personal courage.[707] Precisely similar views prevailed in the heroic age, when the chiefs and principal men were exercised from boyhood in the chase, as appears from the examples of Achilles and Odysseus;[708] of whom the former, according to Pindar, tried his hand at a lion at the age of six years, ἐξέτης τοπρῶτον. Being swift of foot as those Arabs of Northern Africa, who, as Leo[709] says, are a match for any horse, he used without the aid of dogs to overtake and bring down deer with his javelin, and whatever prey he took he carried to his old master Cheiron. This passage Mr. Cary has translated in the following vigorous and elegant manner:—

“In Philyra’s house a flaxen boy Achilles oft in rapturous joy His feats of strength essayed. Aloof like wind his little javelin flew, The lion and the brinded boar he slew; Then homeward to old Cheiron drew Their panting carcases. This when six years had fled; And all the after time Of his rejoicing prime It was to Dian and the blue-eyed Maid A wonder how he brought to ground The stag without or toils or hound. So fleet of foot was he.”

Footnote 706:

Cf. Poll. Onom. v. 17.

Footnote 707:

De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 71. seq.—In his Republic boys were to be permitted when they could do so with safety to proceed to the field of battle, and there to approach sufficiently near the scene as to be able like young hounds to taste, so to speak, of blood.—t. vi. p. 367.

Footnote 708:

Pind. Nem. iii. 43. seq. Diss. Odyss. τ. 429. seq.

Footnote 709:

Descrip. Afric.

Similar manners, if we may confide in Virgil,[710] prevailed among the old inhabitants of Latium, and Xenophon[711] in his monarchical Utopia trains the youth in the same habits.

Footnote 710:

Æneid, ix. 605.

Footnote 711:

Cyneg. ii. 1.

On hunting,[712] as practised in the civilised ages of Greece, we possess more ample details, and it is chiefly by the minuter touches that a picture of this kind can be invested with interest and utility. Xenophon, an aristocratic country gentleman, who living in a corrupt age was, as I have said, wisely partial to the nobler manners of the past, considers the chase as a branch of education.[713] He does not, however, entertain upon this subject the heroic views of Plato, but, looking solely to utility, not only describes the physical conditions and mental qualities of the hunter, but the nets, poles, arms, and every implement made use of by the ancients in the chase.

Footnote 712:

To form a proper idea of the sporting vocabulary of the Greeks, the reader should consult Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, v. 9.-94.

Footnote 713:

Cyneg. ii. 1.

Not to interfere with the discipline of the schools and the gymnasia, the youths were exhorted to betake themselves to field-sports about the age of twenty. Their notions of a sportsman’s costume differed materially from our own, for instead of decking themselves like our fox-hunters in scarlet, they selected the soberest and least brilliant colours both for their cloaks and chitons. The latter were in general extremely short, reaching merely to the hams, as Artemis is usually represented in works of art. But the chlamys was long and ample, that it might be twisted round the left arm in close contest with the larger animals. Their hunting boots reached to the knee, and were bound tight round the leg with thongs. Probably also, as in travelling, they covered their heads with a broad-brimmed hat.

The apparatus of a Greek sportsman would appear somewhat cumbersome, and perhaps a little ludicrous to a modern Nimrod. But understanding their own object they went their own way to work; their arms and implements, varying with the chase in which they were engaged, consisted of short swords, hunting knives[714] for the purpose of cutting down brushwood to stop up openings in the forest, axes for felling trees, darts furnished with thongs for drawing them back when they had missed their aim, bows, boar-spears, weapons peculiarly formidable, nets small and large, some for setting up in the plains, some for traversing glades or narrow alleys in the woods, and others shaped like a female head-net, to be placed in small dusky openings, where being unperceived the game sprang into them as into a sack, which closed about it by means of a running cord, net-poles, forked stakes, snares, gins, nooses, and leashes for the dogs.[715] The darts used on these occasions had ashen or beechen handles, and the nets were usually manufactured with flax imported from Colchis on the Phasis, Egypt, Carthage, and Sardinia.[716] Generally, too, they took along with them the Lagobalon, a short, crooked stick with a knob at one end, with which they sometimes brought down the hare in its flight.[717] This practice, common enough among poachers in our country, is by them denominated _squailing_.

Footnote 714:

Poll. v. 19.

Footnote 715:

Cf. Grat. Falisc. Cyneg. p. 14. Wase.

Footnote 716:

Xen. Cyneg. ii. 3. Grat. Falisc. Cyneg. p. 6. Wase. Pollux, v. 26.

Footnote 717:

Spanh. Obs. in Callim. Hymn. in Dian. ii. p. 122. Poll. v. 20.—Hares are hunted with sticks in South Guinea by the blacks.—Barbot. iii. 14.

Without the aid of dogs, however, hunting is a poor sport. The ancients, therefore, much addicted to this branch of education, paid great attention to the breed of these animals, of which some were sought to be rendered celebrated by heroic and fabulous associations. Thus the Castorides, it was said, sprang[718] from a breed to which the twin god of Sparta was partial; the Alopecidæ were a cross between a dog and a she-fox; and a third kind[719] arose from the mingling of these two races. Among modern sportsmen, there are also good authorities who prefer harriers with a quarter of the fox-strain.[720] Other kinds of hounds, as the Menelaides and Harmodian derived their appellation from the persons who reared them.[721]

Footnote 718:

Poll. v. 39. Xen. Cyneg. iii. 1.

Footnote 719:

Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 28. Poll. v. 39.

Footnote 720:

Letters on Hunting, p. 60.

Footnote 721:

Poll. v. 40.

But the whole breeds of certain countries[722] were famous, as the Argive, the Locrian, the Arcadian, the Spanish, the Carian, the Eretrian; the Celtic or greyhound (not known[723] in more ancient times); the Psyllian, so called from a city of Achaia; the dog of Elymæa, a country lying between Bactria and Hyrcania; the Hyrcanian, which was a cross with the lion; the Laconian, of which the bitch was more generous,[724] sometimes crossed with the Cretan, which was itself renowned for its nose, strength and courage,[725] those which kept watch in the temple of Artemis Dictynna having been reckoned a match even for bears; the Molossian, less valued for the chase than as a shepherd’s dog, on account of its great fierceness and power to contend with wild beasts;[726] the Cyrenaic, a cross with the wolf, and lastly the Indian, on which the chief reliance was placed in the chase of the wild boar. This breed, according to Aristotle, was produced by crossing with the tiger, probably the Cheeta.[727] The first and second removes were considered too fierce and unmanageable, and it was not until the third generation that these tiger-mules could be broken in to the use of the sportsman. Some sought in mythology the origin of this noble animal; for, according to Nicander, the hounds of Actæon, recovering their senses after the destruction of their master, fled across the Euphrates and wandered as far as India. Strange stories are related of this breed, of which some it is said would contend with no animal but the lion. Alexander’s dog, which he purchased in India for a hundred minæ, had twice overcome and slain the monarch of the forest.[728]

Footnote 722:

Arist. de Gen. Anim. v. 2. p. 344. Virg. Georg. iii. 405. See the enumeration by Gratius, Cyneg. p. 20. seq.

Footnote 723:

Arrian, de Venat. c. 2.

Footnote 724:

Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 1. Soph. Ajax, 8. Virg. Georg. iii. 405. Λάκαιναι σκύλακες, Plat. Parmen. t. ii. p. 7. had long noses. Arist. de Gen. Anim. v. 2. 344.

Footnote 725:

Æl. De Nat. Anim. iii. 2. Pashley, Travels in Crete, i. 33. Hughes, Travels, &c. i. 489, 501.

Footnote 726:

Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. i.

Footnote 727:

Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 28, with the observations of Camus, t. ii. p. 215. Cf. Scalig. de Subtilitat. x. p. 383. Æl. de Nat. Anim. viii. i.

Footnote 728:

Æl. De Nat. Anim. viii. 1. Poll. Onom. v. 42. seq.

Let us, therefore, now imagine the hounds exactly what they ought to be, and observe under what circumstances they were led afield. As in England, their principal sport was the hare. In winter,[729] it was observed that puss, from the length of the nights, took a wider circuit, and therefore afforded the dogs a better chance of detecting her traces.[730] But when in the morning the ground was covered with ice or white with hoar-frost, the dogs lost their scent, as also amidst abundant dews or after heavy rains. The sportsman accordingly waited till the sun was some way up the sky, and had begun to quicken the subtile odours communicated to the earth.[731] The west wind,[732] which covers the heavens with vast clouds and fills the air with moisture, and the south blowing warm and humid, weaken the scent; but the north wind fixes and preserves it.[733] By moonlight, too, as the old sportsmen remark, and the warmth it emits, the scent is affected; besides that when the moon shines brightly, in their frolicsome and sportive mood the hares, in the secluded glades of the forest, take long leaps and bounds over the green sward, leaving wide intervals between their traces.[734]

Footnote 729:

See on the subject of scent, Sport. Mag. Jan. 1840, and compare Essay on Hunting, p. 1. et seq.

Footnote 730:

Cf. Poll. v. 11. Σύμβολα ἐν τετυπωμένα τῇ γῇ.

Footnote 731:

The phrase in Pollux is ἀποφέρεται ἀπ᾽ αὔτων (τῶν ἰχνῶν) τὸ πνεῦμα. v. 12. The author of the Essay on Hunting (p. 15.) enumerating the several kinds of scent, speaks of them as stronger, sweeter, or more distinguishable at one time than another; and Pollux makes use of much the same language: ἄνοσμα, δύσοσμα, εὔοσμα, κ. τ. λ. l. c.

Footnote 732:

Arist. Prob. xxvi. 23—Falling stars were regarded as a prognostic of high winds, 24. Letters on Hunting, p. 106.

Footnote 733:

Cf. Xen. Cyneg. viii. 1.

Footnote 734:

Xen. Cyneg. v. 4. Poll. v. 67.

From a remark of Xenophon it appears that at least on one point the sportsmen of antiquity were less humane than the modern, since they pursued the chase even in breeding time.[735] They, however, spared the young in honour of Artemis;[736] the spirit even of false religion, on this, as on many other occasions, strengthening the impulses of humanity.

Footnote 735:

See also Spanh. Obs. in Callim. t. ii. p. 123.

Footnote 736:

Xen. Cyneg. v. 14. Klaus. Com. in Agam. p. 114.—Leverets, properly λαγίδια, were often in common with the young of all other wild animals denominated ὀμβρίαι and ὀμβρίκια by the poets.—Poll. v. 15.

Several causes coöperated to render hares unplentiful on the Hellenic continent,—the number of sportsmen, of foxes which devoured both them and their young, and of eagles that delighted in its lofty and almost inaccessible mountains, and shared its game with the huntsman and the fox. Homer, in a few picturesque words, describes the war carried on against puss by this destructive bird.[737] On the islands, whether inhabited or not, few of these obstacles to their increase existed. Sportsmen rarely passed over to them, and in such as were sacred to any of the gods the introduction of dogs was not permitted, so that, like the pigeons and turtle-doves of Mekka, they multiplied in those holy haunts prodigiously.

Footnote 737:

Il. χ. 308. sqq.

It was prohibited by the laws of Attica[738] to commit the slightest trespass during the chase. The sportsman was not allowed to traverse any ground under cultivation, to disturb the course of running water, or to invade the sanctity of fountains. The scene of action accordingly lay among the woods and mountains, the common property of the republic, or, if not, abandoned by general consent to the use of the sportsman. Such were, for example, the woodland districts of Parnes and Cithæron on the borders of Bœotia. Towards these the huntsman, well shod, plainly and lightly dressed,[739] and with a stick in his hand, set out about sunrise in winter, in summer before day.[740] On the road strict silence was observed[741] lest the hare should take the alarm and to her heels. Having reached the cover, the dogs were tied separately that they might be let slip the more easily, the nets were spread in the proper places, the net-guards set, and the huntsman with his dogs proceeded to start the game, first piously making a votive offering of the primitiæ to Apollo and Artemis,[742] divinities of the chase.[743]

Footnote 738:

Xen. Cyneg. v. 34.

Footnote 739:

Poll. v. 17.

Footnote 740:

The pleasure experienced on these occasions is thus enthusiastically described by Christopher Wase:—"What innocent and natural delights are they, when he seeth the day breaking forth, those blushes and roses which poets and writers of romances only paint, but the huntsman truly courts! When he heareth the chirping of small birds perched upon their dewy boughs, when he draws in that fragrancy of the pastures and coolness of the air! How jolly is his spirit when he suffers it to be imported with the noise of bugle-horns and the baying of hounds which leap up and play around him!"—Pref. to Tr. of Gratius, p. 3.

Footnote 741:

See, in the Cyropædia, i. 6. 40, an extremely interesting passage on the chase of the hare.—Cf. Oppian. de Venat. iv. 422.

Footnote 742:

Hence the goddess obtained many of the epithets bestowed on her by the poets, as: ἀγροτέρα, καὶ κυνηγέτις, καὶ φιλόθηρος, καὶ ὀρεία, ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν· καὶ Ἰδαία, ἀπὸ τῆς Ἴδης, καὶ δίκτυνα, ἀπὸ τῶν δικτύων· καὶ ἑκηβόλος, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑκὰς τὰ θνρία βάλλειν· καὶ πολλὰ ἄλλα ὀνόματα ἀπὸ θήρας.—Poll. v. 13.

Footnote 743:

Xen. Cyneg. vi. 1. seq. Poll. v. 13.—It was customary, moreover, to nail the head or a foot of the game to some tree in honour of Artemis.—Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 143.

And now, exclaims the leader of the Ten Thousand, I behold the hounds, joyous and full of fire, spring forward in the track of their game. Eagerly and ardently do they pursue it—they traverse—they run about in a circle—they advance now in a straight line, now bounding away obliquely—they plunge into the thickets, across the glades, through the paths, known or unknown, hurrying one before the other, shaking their tails, their ears hanging low,[744] their eyes flashing with fire. Drawing near the game they indicate the fact to their master by their movements, kindling up into a warlike humour, bounding emulously forward, scorning all thought of fatigue,—now in a body, now singly,—till reaching the hiding-place[745] of the hare they spring towards it all at once. In the midst of shouts and barking the swift animal glances from her form with the hounds at her heels. The huntsman, his left hand wrapped in his chlamys, follows staff in hand, animating his dogs, but avoiding, even if in his power, to head the game.[746]

Footnote 744:

C. Poll. v. 61.

Footnote 745:

Οἱ θάμνοι, the technical term for covert. Poll. v. 15.

Footnote 746:

Xen. Cyneg. vi. 14–17.

A singular species of chase, now common in our own rabbit-warrens, appears to have passed over from Africa to the Balearic Isles, in an ancient account of which the first mention of it occurs. Those islands, it is said, were almost entirely exempted from vermin, but, on the other hand, contained prodigious numbers of rabbits, which almost destroyed every herb and plant by biting their roots. At length, however, they discovered a remedy for this evil. They imported ferrets from Africa, which, having first muzzled them, they let loose in the rabbit-warrens. Creeping into the holes they scared forth the inmates, which were caught by the sportsman. Strabo, who relates the circumstance, calls the ferret a “wild cat.” Pliny, having likewise described the devastations of the rabbits, speaks of it under the name of _viverra_, and says it was held in great estimation for its utility in this chase, which in the seventeenth century was practised in the island of Procida, where they procured the animal from Sicily, and deno