has been widely translated and utilized in Indian schools. A revised form was issued in 1895, under the title of The Indian Empire: its People, History and Products. In 1882 Hunter, as a member of the governor-general’s council, presided over the commission on Indian Education; in 1886 he was elected vice-chancellor of the university of Calcutta. In 1887 he retired from the service, was created K.C.S.I., and settled at Oaken Holt, near Oxford. He arranged with the Clarendon Press to publish a series of Rulers of India, to which he himself contributed volumes on Dalhousie (1890) and Mayo (1892). He had previously, in 1875, written an official Life of Lord Mayo, in two volumes. He also wrote a weekly article on Indian affairs for The Times. But the great task to which he applied himself on his settlement in England was a history upon a large scale of the British Dominion in India, two volumes of which only had appeared when he died, carrying the reader barely down to 1700. He was much hindered by the confused state of his materials, a portion of which he arranged and published in 1894 as Bengal Manuscript Records, in three volumes. A delightful story, The Old Missionary (1895), and The Thackerays in India (1897), a gossipy volume which appeals to all readers of The Newcomes, may be regarded as the relaxations of an Anglo-Indian amid the stress of severer studies. In the winter of 1898–1899, in consequence of the fatigue incurred in a journey to the Caspian and back, on a visit to the sick-bed of one of his two sons, Hunter was stricken down by a severe attack of influenza, which affected his heart. He died at Oaken Holt on the 6th of February 1900.
HUNTING (the verbal substantive from “hunt”; O. Eng.
huntian, hunta; apparently connected with O. Eng. hentan, Gothic
hinpan, to capture, O.H.G. hunda, booty), the pursuit of game
and wild animals, for profit or sport; equivalent to “chase”
(like “catch,” from Lat. captare, Fr. chasse, Ital. caccia). The
circumstances which render necessary the habitual pursuit of
wild animals, either as a means of subsistence or for self-defence,
generally accompany a phase of human progress distinctly inferior
to the pastoral and agricultural stages; resorted to as a recreation,
however, the practice of the chase in most cases indicates a considerable
degree of civilization, and sometimes ultimately becomes
the almost distinctive employment of the classes which are
possessed of most leisure and wealth. It is in some of its latter
aspects, viz. as a “sport,” pursued on fixed rules and principles,
that hunting is dealt with here.
Information as to the field sports of the ancients is in many directions extremely fragmentary. With regard to the ancient Egyptians, however, we learn that the huntsmen constituted an entire sub-division of the great second Historic Field Sports. caste; they either followed the chase on their own account, or acted as the attendants of the chiefs in their hunting excursions, taking charge of the dogs, and securing and bringing home the game. The game was sought in the open deserts which border on both sides the valley of the Nile; but (by the wealthy) sometimes in enclosed spaces into which the animals had been driven or in preserves. Besides the noose and the net, the arrow, the dart and the hunting pole or venabulum were frequently employed. The animals chiefly hunted were the gazelle, ibex, oryx, stag, wild ox, wild sheep, hare and porcupine; also the ostrich for its plumes, and the fox, jackal, wolf, hyaena and leopard for their skins, or as enemies of the farm-yard. The lion was occasionally trained as a hunting animal instead of the dog. The sportsman appears, occasionally at least, in the later periods, to have gone to cover in his chariot or on horseback; according to Wilkinson, when the dogs threw off in a level plain of great extent, it was even usual for him “to remain in his chariot, and, urging his horses to their full speed, endeavour to turn or intercept them as they doubled, discharging a well-directed arrow whenever they came within its range.”[1] The partiality for the chase which the ancient Egyptians manifested was shared by the Assyrians and Babylonians, as is shown by the frequency with which hunting scenes are depicted on the walls of their temples and palaces; it is even said that their dresses and furniture were ornamented with similar subjects.[2] The game pursued included the lion, the wild ass, the gazelle and the hare, and the implements chiefly employed seem to have been the javelin and the bow. There are indications that hawking was also known. The Assyrian kings also maintained magnificent parks, or “paradises,” in which game of every kind was enclosed; and perhaps it was from them that the Persian sovereigns borrowed the practice mentioned both by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia and by Curtius. According to Herodotus, Cyrus devoted the revenue of four great towns to meet the expenses of his hunting establishments. The circumstances under which the death of the son of Croesus is by the same writer (i. 34-45) related to have occurred, incidentally show in what high estimation the recreation of hunting was held in Lydia. In Palestine game has always been plentiful, and the Biblical indications that it was much sought and duly appreciated are numerous. As means of capture, nets, traps, snares and pitfalls are most frequently alluded to; but the arrow (Isa. vii. 24), the spear and the dart (Job. xli. 26-29) are also mentioned. There is no evidence that the use of the dog (Jos. Ant. iv. 8, 10, notwithstanding) or of the horse in hunting was known among the Jews during the period covered by the Old Testament history; Herod, however, was a keen and successful sportsman, and is recorded by Josephus (B.J. i. 21, 13, compare Ant. xv. 7, 7; xvi. 10, 3) to have killed no fewer than forty head of game (boar, wild ass, deer) in one day.
The sporting tastes of the ancient Greeks, as may be gathered from many references in Homer (Il. ix. 538-545; Od. ix. 120, xvii. 295, 316, xix. 429 seq.), had developed at a very early period; they first found adequate literary expression in the work of Xenophon entitled Cynegeticus,[3] which expounds his principles and embodies his experience in his favourite art of hunting. The treatise chiefly deals with the capture of the hare; in the author’s day the approved method was to find the hare in her form by the use of dogs; when found she was either driven into nets previously set in her runs or else run down in the open. Boar-hunting is also described; it was effected by nets into which the animal was pursued, and in which when fairly entangled he was speared. The stag, according to the same work, was taken by means of a kind of wooden trap (ποδοστράβη), which attached itself to the foot. Lions, leopards, lynxes, panthers and bears are also specially mentioned among the large game; sometimes they were taken in pitfalls, sometimes speared by mounted horsemen. As a writer on field sports Xenophon was followed by Arrian, who in his Cynegeticus, in avowed dependence on his predecessor, seeks to supplement such deficiencies in the earlier treatise as arose from its author’s unacquaintance with the dogs of Gaul and the horses of Scythia and Libya. Four books of Cynegetica, extending to about 2100 hexameters, by Oppian have also been preserved; the last of these is incomplete, and it is probable that a fifth at one time existed. The poem contains some good descriptive passages, as well as some very curious indications of the state of zoological knowledge in the author’s time. Hunting scenes are frequently represented in ancient works of art, especially the boar-hunt, and also that of the hare. In Roman literature allusions to the pleasures of the chase (wild ass, boar, hare, fallow deer being specially mentioned as favourite game) are not wanting (Virg. Georg. iii. 409-413; Ecl. iii. 75; Hor. Od. i. 1, 25-28); it seems to have been viewed; however, with less favour as an occupation for gentlemen, and to have been chiefly left to inferiors and professionals. The immense vivaria or theriotropheia, in which various wild animals, such as boars, stags and roe-deer, were kept in a state of semi-domestication, were developments which arose at a comparatively late period; as also were the venationes in the circus, although these are mentioned as having been known as early as 186 B.C. The bald and meagre poem of Grattius Faliscus on hunting (Cynegetica) is modelled upon Xenophon’s prose work; a still extant fragment (315 lines) of a similar poem with the same title, of much later date, by Nemesianus, seems to have at one
