166 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



A grateful return. 



servants, who were placed at board-wages. 1 lie 

 dog soon found board-wages very short allow- 

 ance ; and to make up the deficiency, he had re- 

 course to the kitchen of a friend of his master's, 

 which in better days he had occasionally visited. 

 By a hearty meal, which he received here daily, 

 he was enabled to keep himself in good condi- 

 tion, till the return of his master's family to town 

 on the approach of winter. Though now re- 

 stored to the enjoyment of plenty at home, and 

 standing in no need of foreign liberality, he 

 did not forget that hospitable kitchen where 

 he had found a resource in his adversity. A 

 few days after, happening to saunter about 

 the streets, he fell in with a duck, which, as 

 he found it in no private pond, he probably 

 concluded to be no private property. He 

 snatched up the duck in his teeth, carried it to 

 the kitchen where he had been so hospitably fed, 

 laid it at the cook's feet, with many polite move- 

 ments of his tail, and then scampered off with 

 much seeming complacency at having given this 

 testimony of his grateful sense of favours. 



The following instance of incongruous adop- 

 tion, however singular, is related upon respect- 

 able authority. 



A farmer, living at Hainton, near Market 

 Raison, in Lincolnshire, a few years since lost 

 an ewe, the mother of two lambs. He chanced 

 to have at the same time, a mastiff bitch, with a 

 litter of puppies. Not having occasion for these 



