24- NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DOG. 



Var. F — The Water Spaniel, Canis aquaticus, Lin. ; chien harhat, 

 BuflF. 

 Sub-varieties — a, small water spaniel, petit barbet, BufF. ; b, 



draught were quickly observed and duly appreciated. Such, we have reason 

 to believe, was the history of the Newfoundland breed of dogs, so called in the 

 latter ages. English travellers to Newfoundland carried with them some of 

 our best water spaniels ; and in return they brought back the Newfoundland 

 dog as a valuable addition to our caninae. Nevertheless, in Newfoundland, 

 the breeding of this dog was only partially cultivated, notwithstanding his 

 beauty, his strength, and his excellent qualities. Indeed the rigors of the cli- 

 mate, and the difficulty of procuring food for it during some seasons of the year, 

 were unfavourable to both the production of numbers and to the full develop- 

 ment of the frame. The splendid animal we now see has been greatly in- 

 creased in size since its residence among us : we have cultivated it so as to 

 make it now an English breed, while in Newfoundland it is at present so 

 nearly extinct, that a gentleman relates, in No. 123 of the new series of the 

 Sporting Magazine, that he could not find a single dog of the kind in St. 

 John's. It is, therefore, a fallacy for naturalists to assert that the dog we 

 possess is the same with that which is " employed in their native districts in 

 place of the horse." Col. Hawker, however, alludes to two breeds of New- 

 foundland dogs. One was from Salvador, where they were in early request, 

 and the other from St. John's. The first he describes as a large bony rough- 

 haired animal, much used in drawing of wood in sledges, which his immense 

 strength enabled him to do with ease. The dog of St. John's, although 

 smaller, the Colonel describes as much the best sporting dog; he is also 

 darker in colour and more agile; his scenting powers are also greater; in 

 proof, one of them will pursue the track of the wounded bird a very great dis- 

 tance, with the utmost precision. The Poole gunners, therefore, possess 

 themselves of these dogs whenever they can ; their aptitude being so great, 

 and their breaking so complete, that they can from the first take them out as 

 retrievers among their poi«ters, so docile are they, and so excellently well 

 are they trained. Mr. Griffiths has much curtailed its dimensions, when he 

 gives the height as two feet at the shoulders. There is extant an engraving, 

 made from a portrait taken by Mr. Edwin Landseer, of one which at a year 

 old was six feet eight inches in length from the nose to the end of the tail, and 

 two feet seven inches in height at the shoulders, at which time he must have 

 had some inches to grow. I saw, some years ago, two of these dogs, in size 

 nearly equal to this, and of the usual colour, which is a tawny, between red 

 and yellow. 



'^ The Alpine spaniel, or the dog of Mount St. Bernard, is a very noble 



