THE COACH-DOG, OR DALMATIAN. 729 



discovered that not one lamb of the whole flock was want- 

 ing ! How he had got all the divisions collected in the dark 

 is bejond my comprehension. The charge was left entirely 

 to himself, from midnight until the rising sun ; and if all 

 the shepherds in the forest had been there to have assisted 

 him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety 

 All that I can further say is, that I never felt so grateful to 

 any creature under the sun as I did to my honest Sirrah 

 that morning." 



THE COACH-DOG, OR DALMATIAN. 



This dog, once so common an attendant upon gentlemen's 

 carriages, has no\7 become exceedingly scarce. Some authors 

 have confounded him with the Danish dog. Buffon and 

 others imagine him to be the harrier of Bengal ; but his 

 native country is Dalmatia, a mountainous district of Euro- 

 pean Turkey. 



In Britain the Dalmatian has only been used for orna- 

 ment, while in Italy he was long the harrier of that coun- 

 try, and used for upwards of two centuries as a dog of the 

 chase. He has also been used as a pointer, for which he has 

 been found even more adapted than for hunting ; and many 

 instances have occurred where he has turned out very 

 stanch. His form is handsome, as if a medium between the 

 foxhound and pointer, his head, however, is more acute than 

 that of the latter, and his ears fully longer ; his general 

 colour is white, and his entire skin covered with small black 

 or reddish-brown spots. The pure breed has tanned cheeks 

 and black ears. In size, he is considerably smaller than the 

 Danish dog. A barbarous opinion prevailed at one time in 

 this country, that the Dalmatian looked better with his ears 

 cropped; and we remember the time when hardly one that 

 we met with but had been denuded of those elegant append- 



5a 



