Note 215 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.

Few coursers wait till the period specified before they enter their dog-puppies: but it occasionally happens that dogs entered at fifteen months old, if they are large and unset in their limbs, break down under severe work, and are rendered subsequently useless; while others, again, more neat and compact of shape, will run as well at eighteen months as at any later period.

Mayster of Game. c. xiii. fol. 52.

“Men shuld late renne no houndes,” says Duke Edmund, “of what condicions that thei be of, ne nat hunte with hem in to the tyme that thei were a xii mounthis olde and passed, and also thei may hunt but ix yeer at the moost.”