NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 269 



of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are bred upon vegetables, and would 

 not eat flesh when offered them by our circumnavigators. 



We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, up- 

 right, fox-like ears ; and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so 

 graceful, are the effect of choice breeding and cultivation. Thus, 

 in the " Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China," the 

 dogs which draw the Tartars on snow-sledges, near the river Oby, 

 are engraved with prick-ears, like those from Canton. The Kams- 

 chatdales 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 hun 

 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 twa 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 

 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 

 garbage ; and indeed there may be somewhat of providential 

 instinct in this circumstance of dislike ; for vultures,* and kites, 

 and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with 



* " 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 in the- same place." 



