140 ANECDOTE THE SIBERIAN DOG SMALLER ARCTIC. 



fish, which they are said to catch with great art. The Inhabitants use these dogs 

 to hunt the Polar Bear, with which they have terrible, sometimes fatal, conflicts. 

 A curious Anecdote respecting a Dog and Bear, has lately been copied from the 

 German papers, and the facts formally certified by the Gamekeeper of a Transyl- 

 vanian Noble, in which Country there are a great number of bears. A bear which 

 had stolen a sheep, being closely pursued by several dogs, promptly resorted to the 

 following ingenious expedient. He tore the sheep in pieces, and threw one of the 

 hinder legs to the dogs, and whilst they were partaking of the repast with which 

 he had treated them, had full time to make his escape. But the sequel of this affair 

 is still more curious. From the date of this hospitality in the bear, the dogs 

 would never again attack any of his kind, but on the contrary received them 

 in the most friendly manner, as if expecting, from former experience, another 

 treat ! The Proprietor of the sheep was, in consequence, obliged to have his dogs 

 shot, and substitute others undebauched in their loyalty, and which would defend 

 his flock from the bears. 



A Siberian Dog, probably of the species of the Great Russian boor-dog, is at this 

 time, exhibiting at Bath by Mons. Chabert, who, it seems, procured the animal 

 from Siberia. This dog, although but ten months old, is nearly four feet in 

 height, has the ear of the bear, the head and skin of the wolf, and the tail of the 

 fox. Nothing can be more probable than an intercopulation between these animals 

 in a wild state, as it has been so frequently witnessed between the canine bitch, and 

 the wolf and fox; nor is there any thing of the incredible in the supposition, that 

 the bear may have joined with the larger kind of dog. 



The Ships, on their return from the late Voyage of Discovery to the North Pole, 

 brought home from Baffin's Bay, four Arctic, or Greenland Dogs, and an Arctic 

 Fox. Portraits of these may be seen in the Sporting Magazine, for January 1819. 

 Two of these dogs were presented by Captain Ross to the British Museum ; the 

 other two to a Gentleman named Ward. Of those given to the Museum, one, a 

 female, was sent to France, as a present to the Museum of Natural History, in which 

 is an extensive Menagerie, where the animal will doubtless be kept alive. The 

 remaining Dog, at our British Museum, was killed, and his skin stuffed, there 

 being no convenience for keeping animals, and the dog being fierce and dangerous. 

 The fox remains alive. 



From the portrait of the Dog in the Magazine above cited, he would appear to 

 be a smaller variety of the Arctic species, than those commonly used in draught, 

 and it may be conjectured that such smaller variety may originate in a Fox cross, 

 as the largest may probably in that of the Wolf. A Writer in the Magazine, seems 

 to confound the Greenland Dog, with that called the Newfoundland, which has 

 been imported from thence, and from the neighbouring court of Labrador, where 

 the Esquimaux, inhabitants of that Country, use them for draught and for hunting. 

 There are however, as we before stated, varieties of the same species, that of New- 



