294 
NATURAL HISTORY 
have a surly, savage demeanour like their ancestors, whicli 
are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they are 
fed for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food. 
These dogs, having been taken on board as soon as weaned, 
could not learn much from their dam; yet they did not 
relish flesh when they came to England. In the islands 
of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are bred up on vegetables, 
and would not eat flesh when offered them by our circum- 
navigators. 
We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, 
upright, fox -like ears ; and that hanging ears, which are 
esteemed so graceful, are the effect .of choice breeding and 
cultivation. Thus, in the Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from 
Muscovy to China/^ the dogs which draw the Tartars on snow 
sledges near the river Oby are engraved with prick-ears, 
like those from Canton. The Kamtschatdales also train the 
same sort of sharp-eared, peaked-nosed dogs to draw their 
sledges ; as may be seen in an elegant print engraved for 
Captain Cook^s last voyage round the world. 
IsTow we are upon the subject of dogs, it may not be im- 
pertinent to add, that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though 
they hunt partridges and pheasants as it were by instinct, 
and with much delight and alacrity, 3^et will hardly touch 
their bones When offered as food ; nor will a mongrel dog of 
my own, though he is remarkable for finding that sort of 
game. But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges 
to the two Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much 
greediness, and licked the platter clean. 
'No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the 
scent and trained to the sport, which they then pursue with 
vehemence and transport ; but then they will not touch their 
bones, but turn from them with abhorrence, even when they 
are hungry. 
Now that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such 
birds as they are not disposed to hunt is no wonder ; but 
why they reject and do not care to eat their natural game is 
not so easily accounted for, since the end of hunting seems 
to be, that the chase pursued should be eaten. Dogs again 
will not devour the more rancid water-fowls^ nor indeed the 
