Note 429 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

Although it is clear, almost to demonstration, that the greyhound was utterly unknown to ancient Greece in the days of the elder Xenophon, I readily allow that Greece may have been Arrian’s coursing-field, with the hound of Celtica, at a later period—an opinion supported by Janus Vlitius;—for into the south of Europe the dog had been introduced as a prodigy of speed—Gratii Cyneg. vs. 204.“ocyor affectu mentis pinnâque”—probably direct from the country of which he was indigenous, viz. Transalpine Gaul,De Venatione c. xxiii. τῆς Κελτικῆς Γαλατίας of Stephanus, (the Gallia Celtica of my annotations, without reference to Cæsar’s more limited appropriation of the term Celtica,) about the commencement of the Christian æra.