ENGLISH POiNTEE.] THE DOG, A]S"D ITS VAEIETIES; [english pointee. 



cians speak of a dog of Germany, which, in 

 a manner, is perfectly intelligible, and would 

 call for tea, coffee, chocolate, &c. The person 

 who evidenced the qualities of this dog, and 

 who communicated an account of them to 

 the Eoyal Academy of France, was no less 

 than the distinguished Leibnitz — one not 

 likely to form a hasty opinion, or coolly report 

 an untruth. The dog, however, had been 

 educated to his mode of speech. A little boy, 

 the s'on of a peasant, imagined that he per- 

 ceived in the voice of the dog the rudimental 

 resemblance to certain words, and, therefore, 

 took it into his head to teach him to speak. 

 With this object in view he set to work, and 

 spared neither time, labour, nor patience upon 

 his canine scholar, who was about three years 

 old when his education in the German lan- 

 guage commenced ; and he soon made such 

 progress, that he could articulate, with some 

 degree of distinctness, no fewer than thirty 

 words. It appears, however, that he was 

 somewhat of a truant, and was negligent in 

 the exertion of his extraordinary talents — a 

 circumstance very common, even in men of 

 conscious ability. He was averse to his being 

 pressed into the service of literature ; so that 

 it was necessary that the word should be first 

 pronounced to him each time, which he, as it 

 •were, echoed from his preceptor. Leibnitz, 

 however, attests that he himself heard him 

 speak ; and the French academicians add, that 

 unless they had received the testimony of so 

 great a man as Leibnitz, they should scarcely 

 have dared to report the circumstance. This 

 extraordinary dog was a native of Zeitz, in 

 Misnia, in Saxony. Had this dog been a 

 native of Japan instead of Germany, to what 

 a degree of consideration would he not have 

 risen ! The islands of that empire form the 

 earthly paradise of dogs. There they have 

 every encouragement to live happily, and enjoy 

 a perfect immunity from many of the punish- 

 ments to which they are doomed by the less 

 Jiumane, yet more civilised Europeans. The 

 reason for this exemption arose out of a sin- 

 gular superstition. A.n emperor, who reigned 

 at the close of the last century, chanced to be 

 born under the sign of the Dog, one of the 

 twelve celestial signs of Japan ; and on this 

 account the emperor decreed that all dogs 

 should be deemed sacred. They, accordingly, 

 434 



have no masters, but lie and prowl about the 

 streets as they list, to the extreme annoyance 

 of many of the passers-by, and especially to 

 those who are not possessed of very strong, 

 affectionate, canine tendencies. If a pack of 

 these dogs take it into their sagacious heads 

 to attack a person, he must, on no account, 

 beat or kill them, but suffer himself to be 

 bitten, or, perhaps, like Actaeon, devoured. 

 To kill one of them is death by the law, no 

 matter what may have been the ferocity of the 

 brute. In every town there are guardians of 

 these dogs, and they alone are empowered to 

 punish their charges. Every street must 

 maintain a certain number of these animals, 

 or, at least, provide them with victuals. Huts, 

 or dog hospitals, are erected in different parts 

 of the towns ; and to these, in cases of sickness, 

 the patients must be carefully conveyed by 

 the inhabitants. The dogs that die must be 

 carried up to the tops of the hills and the 

 mountains, the usual places of burial for the 

 human species, and there be respectfully in- 

 terred. Had the speaking dog of Germany 

 chanced to have been born in such a comuiu- 

 nity, it is impossible to say what honours 

 might have been conferred upon him. An 

 emperor raised his horse to the dignity of the 

 Eoman magistracy; the Emperor of Japan 

 might, at least, have made the dog a professor 

 of languages. 



The dog is not the only animal that can be 

 trained to point. "We have heard of other 

 species matchless even in this particular. jMr. 

 Daniel, in his Bural Sports, records the case 

 of a female pig, the property of jNIr. Toomer, 

 gamekeeper to Sir Henry Mildmay, that was 

 as perfect a pointer as ever took the field. Mr. 

 Blaine substantiates the account of Mr. Daniel, 

 by the evidence of an eye-witness of the facts 

 recorded. "It was certainly," he says, "a 

 mere matter of accident that occasioned the 

 development of the peculiar scenting powers 

 of this extraordinary animal. The aptitude of 

 swine, generally, in finding certain palatable 

 roots under ground was well known to Toomer ; 

 nor was it unlikely, by what followed, that he 

 might have entertained an opinion, that almost 

 any keen-scenting animal could be taught both 

 to wind game, and to stand on the point to- 

 wards it; and that he was, therefore, led to 

 allow a female pig to accompany his young 



