Page:Dogs of China & Japan - Collier - 1921.djvu/107

 the purpose for which it has been from time to time most useful has ended in the race becoming fixed by the modern show-system as a guard-dog. "The modern mastiff has an excellent nose but is of little or no use for sporting purposes." This type of dog cannot be the same as that which existed in the sixteenth century.

The Chinese Imperial hunts have been given up for a century and upkeep of the dogs has long since ceased. It

may be that specimens may be found with the chiefs of some of the Mongol tribes but with the gradual extinction of the big game of China it is unlikely that many of the hounds exist.

Representations of these hounds are found in certain pictures of the K'ang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung period from Jehol.

Laufer figures hunting-dogs of the Han period from rubbings taken from bas-reliefs at Hsiao T'ang Shan. These may be roughly dated 150 One of these bas-reliefs, of colossal size, shows eight hunters afoot, carrying nets over their shoulders and eight dogs preceding them.

"All the aforementioned greyhounds and hunting-dogs 61