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What is the cause that in a white or hoarie frost, wilde beasts are hardly traced?
WHether is it for that they being loth for very colde to range farre from their dennes, leave not many marks of their footings upon the ground: which is the reason that at other times they make spare of that prey which is neere unto them, for feare of danger if they should be forced to range farre abroad in Winter, and because they would have ready at hand about them at such an hard season to feed upon.
Or else is it requisit that the place where men doe hunt, have not onely the tracts of the beast to be seene, but also of force to affect the sent of the hounds, and to set their nosthrils a worke; [ 40] but then doe they moove this sense of theirs, when as they are gently dissolved and dilated as it were by heat: whereas the aire if it be extreme colde, congealing as it were the smels, will not suffer them to spread and be diffused abroad, thereby to move the sense: and heereupon it is (as folke say) that perfumes, ointments, and wines, be lesse fragrant and odoriferous in Winter, or in cold weather, than at other times, for the aire being it selfe bound and shut close, doth like∣wise stay within it all sents, and will not suffer them to passe foorth.