256 NATURAL HISTORY 



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, &c. 

 were intended to be messmates with dogs d 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. 



LETTER LIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer-forest is not 

 yet all exhausted ; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble 

 upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a 

 labourer of Oakhanger to a carpenter of this village ; this was 

 the but-end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about 

 five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from 

 the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as black as 

 ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had 



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 in the same place. 



d The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh. 



