Note 402 — CANES VENATICI. Class II.
William Dansey translation
Lonicer’s ratio vulpinandi in his ‘venatus et aucupium’ shows in its accompanying most spirited engraving the fox-chase of three centuries ago:
Venatus et Aucupium per J. A. Lonicer.
Callida versuto capitur stratagemate vulpes: Novit enim dubias mille dolosa vias, &c.
For the merits of the fox-chase, and its “commoditie of exercise,” see Sir Thomas Elyot’s ‘The Governour,’ Book i. c. xviii. and for “the flying of this chase,” see a Short Treatise of Hunting, compyled for the Delight of Noblemen and Gentlemen, by Sir Thomas Cockaine, Knight—wherein he states “that the author hereof hath killed a foxe distant from the covert where hee was found foureteene miles aloft the ground with hounds,”—a run that would be deemed pretty good, I suppose, even by the modern descendants of any Nimrod knight.