Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/291

Rh of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are bred upon vegetables, and would not eat flesh when offered them by our circumnavigators.

We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, up-right, 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 Kamschatdales also train the same sort of sharp-eared, peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges; as may be seen in an elegant print engraved for Captain Cook's last voyage round the world.

Now we are upon the subject of dogs, it may not be impertinent 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, yet 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 bones of any wild fowls; nor will they touch the fœtid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage; and indeed there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike; for vultures, and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with