ATCHING ANIMALS WITH THE BOLA. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Ptahhotpu.
Above are seen two porcupines, the foremost of which,
emerging from his hole, has seized a grasshopper.

Such animals by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and
formed about his dwelling a motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure
and mostly for his profit, and becoming in case of necessity a ready
stock of provisions.[**]

** In the same way, before the advent of Europeans, the
half-civilized tribes of North America used to keep about
their huts whole flocks of different animals, which were
tame, but not domesticated.

Efforts were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to
procure animals without seriously injuring them, caused the Egyptians
to use the net for birds and the lasso and the _bola_ for
quadrupeds,[*]--weapons less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. The
_bola_ was made by them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap
about five yards in length. The stone once thrown, the cord twisted
round the legs, muzzle, or neck of the animal pursued, and by the
attachment thus made the pursuer, using all his strength, was enabled to
bring the beast down half strangled. The lasso has no stone attached
to it, but a noose prepared beforehand, and the skill of the hunter
consists in throwing it round the neck of his victim while running.
They caught indifferently, without distinction of size or kind, all
that chance brought within their reach. The daily chase kept up these
half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats, water-bucks, stocks, and
ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by hundreds on the monuments
of the ancient empire.[**]

* Hunting with the bola is constantly represented in the
paintings both of the Memphite and Theban periods. Wilkinson
has confounded it with lasso-hunting, and his mistake has
been reproduced by other Egyptologists. Lasso-hunting is
seen in Lepsius, Denhn., ii. 96, in Dumichen, _resultate_,
vol. i. pl. viii., and particularly in the numerous
sacrificial scenes where the king is supposed to be
capturing the bull of the north or south, previous to
offering it to the god.

** As the tombs of the ancient empire show us numerous
flocks of gazelles, antelopes, and storks, feeding under the
care of shepherds, Fr. Lenormant concluded that the
Egyptians of early tim