318 MATERNAL SAGACITY. 
that case, if no worthy substitute can be found, the most humane mode of action is to 
remove the young puppies in succession, and so to avoid too severe a shock to the 
maternal feelings of their progenetrix. If they are all removed at the same time, the 
sudden deprivation is very likely to bring on a severe fever, and to endanger the already 
weakened life of the mother. If the process of removing and destroying the young ones 
has been repeated more than once, the mother becomes so watchful over her progeny that 
it is by no means easy to withdraw them without her cognizance. As an example of this 
maternal vigilance, I'am_-enabled to give an anecdote which has been forwarded to me by 
Mis. 8. C. Hall, which exhibits not only the good memory of an often bereaved mother, 
but a most touching instance of maternal affection. 
“Tn our large, rambling, country home, we had Dogs of high and low degree, from the 
silky and sleepy King Charles down (query, up ?) to the stately Newfoundland, who 
disputed possession of the top step—or rather platform to which the steps led—of the 
lumbering hall-door with a magnificent Angora ram, who was as tame and almost as 
intelligent as Master Neptune himself. After sundry growls and butts the Doe and the 
ram generally compromised matters by dividing the step between them, much to the 
inconvenience of every other quadruped or biped who might desire to pass in or out of 
the hall. 
The King Charles, named Chloe, was my dear grandmother’s favourite ; she was a 
meek, soft, fawning little creature, blind of one eye, and so gentle and faithful, refusing 
food except from the one dear hand that was liberal of kindness to her. Chloe’s 
puppies were in great demand; and it must be confessed that her supply was very 
bountiful, too bountiful indeed, for out of the four which she considered the proper 
number at a birth, two were generally drowned. My erandmother thought that Chloe 
ought not to raise more than two; Chloe believed that she could educate four, and it was 
alw ays difficult to abstract the doomed ones front the watchful little mother. 
It so chanced that once, after the two pups had been drowned by one of the stablemen, 
poor Chloe discovered their little wet bodies in the stable-yard, and brought them to the 
live ones that remained in her basket. She licked them, cherished them, howled over 
them, but still they continued damp and cold. Geutle at all other times, she would not 
now permit even her dear mistress to remove them, and no stratagem could draw her from 
her basket. At last, we supposed, Chloe felt it was not good for the dead and the living to 
be together, so she took one of the poor things in her mouth, walked with it across “the 
lawn to the spot where a lovely red thorn-tree made a shady place, dug a hole, laid the 
puppy in it, came back for the other, placed it with its little relative, scraped the earth 
over them, and returned sadly and slowly to her duties. 
The story of the Dog burying her puppies was discredited by some of our neighbours ; 
and the next time that Chloe became a mother the dead puppies were left in her way, for 
my grandmother was resolved that her friends should witness her Doe’s sagacity. This 
time Chloe did not bring the dead to the living, but carried them at once to the same spot, 
dug their graves, and placed them quietly in it. It almost seemed as if she had ascertained 
what death was.” 
I am also indebted to the same lady for a short history of canine life, which 
corroborates the account of assistance requested by one Dog and given by another which 
may be found on p. 287. 
“Neptune, the ram’s antagonist, had a warm friendship for a very pretty retriever, 
Charger by name, who, in addition to very warm affections, possessed a very hot temper. 
In short, he was a decidedly quarrelsome Dog; but Neptune overlooked his friend’s 
faults, and bore his ill- -temper with the most dignified eravity, turning away his head, and 
not seeming to hear his snarls, or even to feel his snaps. 
But all Dogs were not equally charitable, and Charger had a long-standing quarrel 
with a huge bull-dog, I believe it was, for it was ugly and ferocious enough to have been 
a bull- dog, belonging to a butcher,—the only butcher within a cirele of five miles,—who 
lived at Carrick, ‘and was called the Lad of Carrick, He was very nearly as authoritative 
as his bull-dog. It so chanced that Charger and the bull-dog met somewhere, and the 
result was that our beautiful retriever was brought home so fearfully mangled that it was 
