Note 14 — PREFACE.

Oppian Halieut. i. vs. 28.

Coursing has ever been held an honourable and gentlemanly amusement in Great Britain, from its earliest annals to the present time. Nor can I discover any authority for the truth of Vlitius’s opinion, as given in his note on the Veltraha of Gratius. Vlitii Venatio Novantiqua.“Ne ideò Vertragis suis sagaces posthabeat ille Xenophon: nam hodiè in Angliâ sagaces nobilissimi quique exercent; Vertrago autem leporem conficere, indignum benè nato parum abest quin habeatur.” Such never was the opinion entertained of “greyhound hunting,” in King James’s phrase:—indeed the farther we go back into the history of the leash, the higher it ranked in the scale of British field-sports. See the “Constitutiones Canuti Regis de forestâ”—and Blount’s Ancient Tenures passim, for instances of the high repute in which the courser’s hound has ever been held in Great Britain.