266 NA TURA L HIS TOR Y OF SEL B ORNE. 



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

 river Oby, are engraved with prick-ears, like those from Canton. 

 The Kamschat dales 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 hunt 

 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 two 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 fcetid 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 f 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. 



* " Hasselqu'st, 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." 



t " The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh."*- 



1 Canton, khin or khuon. Pekin, kincu, Greek, K ve v . 



