266 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
the dogs which draw the Tartars on snow-sledges, near the 
river Oby, are engraved with prick-ears, like those from Canton. 
The Kamschatdales also train the same sort of sharp-eared, peak- 
nosed dogs to draw their sledges; as may 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 
delight and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones when offered 
as food; nor will a mongrel dog of my own, though he is remark- 
able 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 hungry. 
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 rahcid 
water-fowls, nor indeed the bones of any wild fowls ; nor will they 
touch the foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage ; 
and indeed there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this 
circumstance of dislike ; for vultures,* and kites, and ravens, and 
crows, &c., were intended to be messmates with dogs over their 
carrion ; and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers 
to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth. 
I am, &c. 
* « Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs and vultures at 
Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as to bring up their young together ia 
the same place.’’ 
+ ‘© The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like guihloh.’"+ 
1 Canton, Ahz2 or Ahuon. Pekin, kinew, Greek, xteov. 
