72 OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS. 



The spaniel was in the habit of following its mis- 

 tress in her walks in the garden, and by degrees it 

 formed a friendship with a young cat of the gardener's, 

 which it tempted into the house, first into the hall, 

 and then into the kitchen, where, on finding one 

 of the large cats, the spaniel and its ally fell on 

 it together, and without further provocation beat 

 it well ; they then waited for the other, which they 

 served in the same manner, and finally drove both 

 cats from the kitchen. The two friends continued 

 afterwards to eat off the same plate as long as the 

 spaniel remained with her mistress in the house. 



A person of my acquaintance had a favourite 

 spaniel that lived to be upwards of eighteen years 

 of age. Probably not many dogs exceed that age ; 

 and I have seen some which appeared to be quite 

 helpless and infirm, short-breathed, and without hard- 

 ly a tooth in their heads, at the age of fifteen.* 



SQUIRREL, f 



April 23, 1 822. TO-DAY, in a plantation of spruce- 

 firs, we observed at the top of one of the tallest trees, 



* Mr. Selby tells me, that he considers twelve or fourteen years 

 the usual length of the dog's life. He says he has known one or 

 two that have lived to be seventeen or eighteen, and thinks he has 

 been told of one that had attained to twenty. 



Lord Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, says, " The dog 

 is but a short liver ; he exceeds not the age of twenty years, and, 

 for the most part, lives not to fourteen years." Twenty years 

 may therefore probably be set as the extreme limit they ever 

 reach. 



*t* Sciurus vulgar is, Linn. 



