Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/393

Rh that Ariosto, in the last scene in the 'Orlando Furioso,' where he is describing the Saracen pinned down by Ruggiero, says:—

This is all Dante has to say of hounds, and I will therefore turn to their quarry.

Of Wolves he often speaks; they are to him the symbol of avarice, either of the Florentines (Purg. xiv. 50), or of the Popes (Par. ix. 132); nor could any animal better describe insatiate desire that derives no benefit from getting. Two passages in particular give one a perfect picture of the beast (Inf. 1. 49): She-Wolf ("Chi ditute brame Sembiava carca nella sua sembianza"); and again he speaks (Purg. xx. 10) of the limitless hunger of the "old she-Wolf, who more than all the beasts has prey" ("Per la sua fame senza fine cupa"). We have a sketch, too, of the Wild Boar (porco), which modern Italian keeps for the domestic Pig, using cinghiale for the nobler animal. He tells us of its tusks, and describes the noise a Boar-hunt makes (Inf. xiii. 113) as beast and dogs come crashing through the branches. Apparently they did not hunt the Fox, for the only allusions to the Volpe refer in a general way to his cunning (as when he speaks of the Pisans (Purg. xiv. 53), but they hunted the Deer (dama) (Par. iv. 6)). In an amusing passage he alludes to it. He says his mind was so evenly divided that he is like a man free to choose between two kinds of food equally removed and equally tempting, who would die of hunger; and so would stand a hound between two does. Few now quote this simile, for to our generation Heine's Donkey between two bundles of hay is better known.

Whatever Dante's enjoyment of the chase may have been, there can be little doubt that he preferred hawking. According to Plumptre this pursuit, which had been lately introduced into Italy by Federigo II., formed part of Dante's education, and he had probably read a copy of Frederic's work on hawking, which existed in manuscript with hand-painted pictures, and must have been in a way to that age what Gould's 'Birds' has been to ours.

This we gather from the way in which he used terms in falconry, and from the fact that by piecing together his different similes we have a very fair picture of the sport. He says, for