Note 175 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.

Ἐκπεριΐασι δὲ ἐπὶ μετώπου ταχθέντες. We here see the military tactician: after the lapse of nearly seventeen centuries, no improvement has taken place in the mode of beating for a hare. One of our best English manuals of coursing, whose author was probably as expert in the field as his predecessor of Bithynia, thus describes the plan adopted in the days of good Queen Bess: Turberville’s Booke of Hunting, &c.“To course y^e. hare you must send either hare-finders before you to find some hare sitting, or els yourself w^h. your company may range and beat over the fields until you either find a hare sitting, or start her. I have marked y^e. hare-finders in their seeking of a hare in Northamptonshyre, and they will never beat but one end of a furlong: and that shall be the end which is downe the wind or from the wind; for they hold opinion that a hare will not (by her wil) sit with her head into the wind. He that will seeke a hare must go overthwart the lands; and every land that he passeth over, let him beginne with his eye at his foot, and so looke downe the land to the furlong’s end, first on the one side and then on the other; and so shall he find y^e. hare sitting in her forme: assoone as he espyeth her he must cry Sa how. Then they which lead the greyhounds may come neare: and you may appoynt which greyhounds shall course. Then let him which found the hare, go towards her and say, Up, pusse, up! untill she rise out of her forme.”