BOOK VIII.] History of Nature. 71 



upon the Ground. 1 The longer we live the more Things we 

 observe still in Dogs ; but their Skill and Sagacity are 

 chiefly displayed in Hunting : they examine and follow up 

 the Footmarks, leading the Hunter who attends them to the 

 very Place where the Beast lieth ; and having gotten an Eye 

 of his Game, how silent and secret, how significant is their 

 Discovery to the Hunter, first wagging the Tail, and mark- 

 ing with their Nose ! And even when Dogs are worn out, 

 weak and blind, Men carry them in their Arms to hunt, 

 to wind the Beast, and by Scent to show by their pointing 

 of the Nose where the Beast is at Harbour. The Indians 

 desire to procure a Cross between the Dog and the Tiger ; 

 and for this Purpose, at the proper Time, they tie the 

 Bitches in the Woods. They suppose the first and second 

 Litter of such as are thus bred to be too fierce ; but the third 

 they bring up. The Gauls do the same by their Dogs that 

 are produced from Wolves; and of which they have Flocks, 



1 That the fury of a dog is mitigated by a man's sitting down, Homer 

 also informs us, Odyssey, xiv. 33 : 



" Soon as Ulysses near the inclosure drew, 

 With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew : 

 Down sat the sage, and cautious to withstand, 

 Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand. 

 Sudden the master runs ; aloud he calls ; 

 And from his hasty hand the leather falls ; 

 With showers of stones he drives them far away ; 

 The scattering dogs around at distance bay." POPE. 



Mure, in his " Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands," 

 tells us, that " at Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon, 

 then commanding in chief in the Morea, the conversation happened to 

 turn, as it frequently does when tourists are in company, on the subject 

 of the number and fierceness of the Greek dogs ; when one of the com- 

 pany remarked that he knew a very simple expedient for appeasing their 

 fury. Happening, on a journey, to miss his road, and being overtaken 

 by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a pastoral settlement by 

 the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed out upon him, and the 

 consequences might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old 

 shepherd, the Eumseus of the fold, who sallied forth, and finding that the 

 intruder was but a benighted traveller, after pelting off his assailants, 



