Note 407 — CANES VENATICI. Class II.

A preface to the Reader.

There is no variety of sagacious dog, no style of hunting, to which the prefatory encomiums of Wase are more strictly applicable, (however quaint the language in which they are conveyed,) than the beagle tribe, and their various chases. “It is admirable,” says this friend of Edmund Waller, “to observe the naturall instinct of enmity and cunning, whereby one beast being, as it were, confederate with man, by whom he is maintained, serves him in his designes upon others. A curious mind is exceedingly satisfy’d to see the game fly before him, and after that hath withdrawn itselfe from his sight, to see the whole line where it hath pass’d over with all the doublings and cross-works, which the amazed beast hath made, recover’d again, and all that maze wrought out by the intelligence which he holds with dogs: this is most pleasant, and, as it were, a master-piece of natural magique,” &c. See also Gervase Markham’s Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. iv.