FEEDING OF DOGS. 69 



What is the best food for dogs ? An examination of this 

 animal must end in determining that he is neither wholly car- 

 nivorous nor wholly herbivorous, but of a mixed kind ; intended 

 to take in as well vegetable as animal matter, and formed to 

 receive nourishment from either. He is furnished with sharp 

 cutting teeth for tearing flesh, and he has also tolerably broad 

 surfaces on other of his teeth, capable of grinding farinaceous 

 substances: his stomach and intestines likewise hold a middle 

 place between tho^e of the carnivorous and herbivorous tribes. 

 At the same time, both his dental and his digestive organs 

 appear rather more adapted to the mastication and assimilation of 

 animal than vegetable matter ; to which also his habits and par- 

 tialities evidently tend. He is by nature predacious, and intended 

 to live on other animals ; the stronger he hunts in troops, the 

 weaker he conquers singly. Yet still it is clear that his organs 

 fit him, when necessary, for receiving nutriment from vegetable 

 matter also, and we likewise see that he voluntarily seeks it, pro- 

 bably as a necessary mixture, to prevent that tendency to putridity 

 which too great a quantity of animal food begets. It is a 

 received opinion among many sportsmen, that flesh-feeding injures 

 the scent ; but it cannot do it naturally ; for the fox, one of the 

 caninaB, which is known to be by choice wholly carnivorous, 

 principally lives by the exquisite sensibility of his olfactory organs. 

 If the eating of flesh really have such an eflFect on sporting dogs, 

 it can only do so, when it has been taken in such quantities as to 

 vitiate the secretions of the body ; and in this way the pituitary 

 mucous secretions of the nasal sinuses may themselves become 

 somewhat tainted. 



A mixture of both animal and vegetable substances is therefore 

 the most proper general food for dogs, and that which best agrees 

 with the analogies of their nature ; but the proportions of each are 

 best determined, by the exertions of the body. For, as animal 

 food affords most nutriment, so when the bodily exertions are 

 great, as in sporting dogs, then flesh is the best food. On the 

 contrary, when bulk without much nutriment is required, as for 



