A CHAPTER ON DOGS. 



A CHAPTER ON DOGS. 



BY AN ENGLISH REVIEWER. 



[We condense from a capital English review of M. Blaze's work on Dogs, the follow- 

 ing chapter — which we are certain will be read with great pleasure by all our readei's in 

 the country.] 



The dog alone, of all the brute creation, shows a perfect attachment — alone understands 

 our wishes, adapts himself to our habits, waits upon our commands, associates with us as 

 a friend. The service of man, while a single link of the connexion remains, is a necessity 

 of his existence. The Siberian dogs, set free in summer to shift for themselves, though 

 overtasked, treated with brutality, and nearly starved, return to their masters at the ap- 

 proach of winter, to be harnessed to the sledge. The Pariah dog of India, when homeless 

 and unowned, will fasten on a stranger, and exhaust every art to induce him to adopt it. 

 Colonel Hamilton Smith tells of one that tixed his regards on a gentleman traveling rapid- 

 ly in a palanquin, and continued to follow him with wistful eyes, till he dropped with fa- 

 tigue. No one can question that this disposition of the dog is a peculiar gift of Providence 

 for the benefit of our race. Other animals surpass him in beauty and strength, yet in 

 every quarter of the globe, the dog alone is in alliance with man, because he is alone en- 

 dowed with that impulse that renders him accessible to our advances, and submissive to 

 our will. His domestication, in the opinion of Cuvier, is the most complete, the most use- 

 ful, the most singular conquest we have achieved, and perhaps, he adds, essential to the 

 establishment of society. 



The vast power and courage of certain races of the dog are truly extraordinary. The 

 story told by Pliny of an Albanian dog of Alexander the Great, who conquered, one after 

 another, a lion and an elephant, is probably a fable, like the addition of ^lian, that his 

 tail, his legs, and his head, were severally amputated without loosening his hold, or pro- 

 ducing even an appearance of pain. As little do we credit the feats of a mastiflf in the 

 reign of Elizabeth, who was reported to have fought and beaten in succession, a bear, a 

 leopard and a lion. But there are better grounds for believing that one of this species 

 really engaged the king of beasts in the reign of Henry VII., who absurdly ordered him 

 to be hanged for his presumption : and it has been frequently proved that three or four 

 can carry oiF the victory. Colonel Hamilton Smith was witness of a scene between a 

 bull-dog and a bison, in which the former seized the latter by the nose, and kept his hold 

 till the infuriated animal crushed him to death. The terrier grapples with beasts of twen- 

 ty times his size, and, however cruelly mangled, dies without a groan. It is thus that the 

 dog, who provides the savage with food by his swiftness, protects him by his bravery. 

 Such prowess and endurance belong to few of our domestic breeds. But nature develops 

 the fiiculties which the occasion demands. The dogs that live amidst wilds and dangers 

 are all conspicuous for hardihood, daring, and insensibility to pain. Their cunning and sa- 

 gacity are in like manner proportioned to their needs. The dogs by the Nile drink while 

 running to escape the crocodiles. When those of New-Orleans wish to cross the Missis- 

 sippi, they bark at the river's edge to attract the alligators, who are no sooner drawn from 

 their scattered haunts, and concentrated on the spot, than the dogs set off at full speed and 

 plunge into the water higher up the stream. An Esquimaux dog, that was brought to 

 tliis countrj', was given to artifices which are rarely seen in the native Europeans, whose 

 tence does not depend on their own resources — strewing his food round him, and 

 sleep, in order to allure fowls and rats, which he never failed to add to his store. 



