NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 181 



other farinaceous food. These dogs, having been taken 

 on board as soon as weaned, could not learn much from 

 their dam ; yet they did not relish flesh when they came 

 to England. In the islands of the pacific ocean the dogs 

 are bred up on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when 

 offered them by our circumnavigators. 



We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, 

 upright, fox-like ears ; and that hanging ears, which are 

 esteemed so graceful, are the effect of choice breeding and 

 cultivation. Thus, in the Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from 

 Muscovy to China, the dogs which draw the Tartars on 

 snow-sledges, near the river Oby, are engraved with prick- 

 ears, like those from Canton. The Kamschatdales 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 remarkable 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 foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage : 



