NOBLE FUNCTIONS OF THE DOG. 
n 
difficult. These poor dogs resort thus to public charity, because 
their masters have not the means of feeding them, and would oth- 
erwise have to abandon them. 
In Constantinople, and many other cities of the East, the police 
of the streets is confided to dogs regimented in brigades for each 
ward, and all ti^avelers agree that the city of Constantinople is less 
infested with assassins and night robbers than any other in Europe. 
Certain persons, envious of the dog, having thought of taking 
his title of hunting companion to man and of giving it to the hog, 
under pretext that subtlet}^ of smell was still greater in the latter ; 
the hunting dog, indignant, experienced the necessity of taking a 
terrible revenge for this absurd pretension. He studied thoroughly 
the art of finding out the truffle, which was the speciality of the 
hog, and contrived to carry off from his poor rival this glorious 
branch of industry. The dog, not eating the truffle, as the hog 
does, there was no way to accuse him of being inspired in his am- 
bition by the moving spring of personal interest. It must be recog- 
nized, that in legitimately using the right of reprisal in respect to 
the hog, the dog had no other aim than to repel ari injurious accu- 
sation and to condemn his enviers to silence. The dog has been 
trained to turn the spit without paying too much attention to the 
roasting piece — to draw water from the well — to make all sorts of 
utensils — to play in comedies and dramas. It is however evi- 
dent that the present society has not been able to draw from the 
intelligence of the hunting dog half the profits it will one day draw. 
The dog adapts himself to every thing. He replaces the post- 
horse in the snowy steppes of Siberia, of Kamschatka, of Green- 
land, of Labrador. These regions would be quite uninhabitable 
without the dog. Man vegetates there only by the grace of the 
dog, and under his good pleasure. The mission of the post-dog is 
not limited to carry the traveler across the ocean of snows as he 
carries children or four-pound loaves through our crowded streets. 
His trade is severer in polar countries, where the institution of 
bridges and causeways does not yet exist, and where the cold alone 
has charge of leveling and Macadamizing all the roads. From this 
absence of engineers, it follows that the poor beast, to whom the 
conduct of a sledge is intrusted, is bound to perform at once the 
