Quintus Curtius tells us, that, reaching India, the Greeks under Alexander found there a famous breed of dogs for lion-hunting more especially. On beholding a wild beast they hush their yelpings, and hold their prey by the teeth with so much stubbornness that sooner than let go their bite they would suffer one of their own limbs to be cut off: “Nobiles ad venandum canes in ea regione sunt: latratu abstinere dicuntur, quum viderunt feram, leonibus maxime, infesti,” &c.[380] Such is the animal now known as the cheetah, which, as of old so all through the middle ages, up to the present time, has been trained everywhere in Persia and over India for hunting purposes; and called by our countryman, Sir John Mandeville, a “papyonn,” as we have noticed in this catalogue, p. 178. This far-famed hunting-dog of Quintus Curtius, now known as the cheetah or hunting-lion, may be often met with on silken textiles here from Asiatic looms, especially in Nos. 7083, p. 136; 7086, p. 137; 8233, p. 154; 8288, p. 178. [380] Lib. ix. cap. i. sect. 6. SECTION V.--LITURGY. For a sight of some liturgical appliances which, though once so common and everywhere employed have become rare from having one by one dropped into disuse, ritualists, foreign ones among the rest, will have to come hither. A few more of such articles, though still in common use, are remarkable for the antiquity or the costliness of those stuffs out of which they happen to be made. For its age, and the beauty of its needlework, the Syon cope is in itself a remarkable treasure, while its emblazoned orphreys, like the vestments on the person of a Percy in Beverley minster, make it, at least according to present custom, singular. Several chasubles here so noteworthy for their gorgeousness, have their fellows equal in splendour, elsewhere; but in this museum are a few articles which till now we might have sought for in vain throughout Christendom in any other private or public collection.