The dogs (_hundas_), used for the chase among the Anglo-Saxons, were valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great landowner had his _hund-wealh_, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut (No. 43), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, represents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds--they seem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was _ren-hund_, a dog of chase, which is interpreted by greyhound; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon forefathers. It appears by an allusion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales; yet the antiquary will be at once struck with the total dissimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, from the British dogs represented on the Romano-British pottery. The dogs were used to find the game, and follow it by the scent; the hunters killed it with spears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter (_hunta_) of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his “craft,” he replies, “I braid nets, and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become intangled in them, and I slay them in the nets.” He is then asked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, “Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted--“I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “I took two harts and a boar, ... the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” “How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down.” “You were very bold then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods.” It would seem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extensive forests of this island; but Sharon Turner has made a singular mistake, in supposing, from a picture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The scene which he has thus mistaken--or at least, a portion of it--is given in our cut No. 44 (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.); it represents swineherds driving their swine into the forests to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdsmen is shaking from the trees with his hand. The herdsmen were necessarily armed to protect the herds under their charge from robbers. [Illustration: _No. 44. Swine-Herds._]