Discrimination of Odours. 117 
Discussing the day’s work in the evening over a comfortable 
peat fire, with the dog lying snugly on my railway rug (see 
to that my brother sportsmen, as you love your faithful friend), 
Mr. Cox was fain to confess his confidence in a thoroughly 
experienced retriever’s nose, which indulgence in an hereditary 
instinct did not demoralise. 
Many sportsmen appear to entertain the opinion that if 
a dog eats the bones of game he will lose his “nose.” This 
seems to me antecedently most improbable, and the facts 
within my knowledge. do not support it. Well fed sporting 
dogs refuse game, and notably waterfowl, as food, though no 
doubt they will eat these when hard pressed by hunger or 
when their food is too largely composed of farinaceous matter; 
for a considerable proportion of animal food, probably one- 
third at least, is essential to the health of a pointer, setter, 
or retriever in full work. My Australian retriever was 
sometimes reduced to the necessity of eating duck for two 
or three days together during our excursions in Moreton 
Bay, the small allowance of biscuit we were able to apportion 
to him being insufficient. The half of a well-roasted duck 
was not despised after the day’s work, though he would touch 
nothing of the kind when any other flesh food was to be 
had. Nevertheless, his scenting powers did not fail in any 
respect either then or subsequently. The loss of this sense 
may probably be attributed to a different and obvious cause— 
long standing catarrh in the nasal passages, occasioned by 
that partly ignorant and partly selfish neglect with which 
dogs are too often treated when they come home exhausted 
and cold and hungry, while their master goes to his comfort- 
able fireside and hot dinner. We need not be surprised if 
the delicate membranes, which act as receiving surfaces for 
the odours, become thickened by prolonged inflammation, and 
eventually lose all sensibility. If the pointer were liable to 
have his faculty of scent injured by eating the bones of a 
partridge, how much more should that of a hound be vitiated 
by a good mouthful now and then out of a rank dog fox? 
