When the fawn had attained any considerable size, and begun to feed among the herd, the chase of it became more arduous. The fidelity of instinctive love, opposed to human sagacity, exhibited all its force. Closing round their young and drawing up in front of them, the stags, emboldened by affection, trampled the dogs under their feet, frequently to death, unless the huntsman, dashing into the midst of them, could succeed in detaching a single animal from the herd. But, supposing this done, the hounds at first remained far behind the fawn, which, terrified at finding itself alone, bounded along with incredible velocity, though, its strength soon failing, it in the end fell a prey to the hunter. The object of the ancients, however, in the chase not being simple sport, but to obtain possession by the shortest method possible of the game, they set snares in the narrows of the mountains, around the meadows, near the streams and freshes, and in the thickets—wherever, in short, stags could be taken. Pitfalls, too, were dug, as in Africa for the lion,[756] and most of those stratagems resorted to which the Nubians and Egyptian Arabs put in practice against the gazelle. It was in fact common to erect, with rough stones or wood, a sort of skreen, perhaps semicircular, like those behind which the hunters of the desert hide, to conceal themselves when lying in wait for the game.[757] Footnote 756: Xen. Cyneg. ix. 14. sqq.—Ælian describes another method of taking these animals not much practised by modern sportsmen; that is to say by the charms of music, as the Egyptian Psylli captured serpents.—De Nat. Anim. xii. 46. Footnote 757: Poll. v. 36. For the chase of the wild boar,[758] at once a manly and a useful sport, somewhat complicated preparations were necessary. In this the dogs of India, of Crete, of Locris, of Sparta, hunted side by side, and the sportsman took the field armed with strong nets, javelins, hunting poles, and snares. The boar-spears of the ancients[759] were most carefully fashioned, with a broad sharp head and handle of tough wood. So likewise were their hunting-poles armed with long iron points, fixed in brazen sockets, with a shaft of service wood. Footsnares of great strength were set at intervals. This was not the sport of a solitary hunter. They went out in considerable numbers, and kept close together, finding still, for lack of fire-arms, no small difficulty in coping with the foe. On reaching the spot where they supposed the hog to be ensconced, the dogs were all led carefully in leash with the exception of one Spartan hound, which was let loose and accompanied in all his movements. When he appeared to have found the track, they followed him, and he thus took the lead in the chase. Numerous signs also directed the movements of the hunter; in soft places the track, broken branches in thickets, and in forests the wounds on the bark of trees, given by the boar in sharpening his tusks as he passed.[760]