310 NATURAL HISTORY 
be seen in an elegant print engraved for Captain 
Cook’s last voyage round the world. . 
Now we are upon the subject of dogs, it may 
not be impertinent’ to add that spaniels, as all 
sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and 
pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much de. 
light and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones 
when offered as food; nor will a mongrel dog of 
my own, though he is remarkable for finding that 
sort of game. But when we came to offer the 
bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they 
devoured them with much greediness, and licked 
the platter clean. 
No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured 
to the scent and trained to the sport, which they 
then pursue with vehemence and transport; but 
then they will not touch their bones, but turn from 
them with abhorrence even when they are hun- 
ry. ; 
4 Now that dogs should not be fond of the bones 
of such birds as they are not disposed to hunt is 
no wonder ; but why they.reject and do not care to 
eat their natural game is not so easily accounted 
for, since the end of hunting seems to be, that the 
chase pursued should be eaten. Dogs, again, will 
not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor, indeed, 
the bones of any wild-fowls, nor will they touch the 
foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and gar- 
bage ; and, indeed, there may be somewhat of 
providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike, 
for vultures,* and kites, and ravens, and crows, 
* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the 
dogs and vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly inter- 
course as to bring up their young together in the same place. 
