My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East India
Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese breed from
Canton, such as are fattened in that country for the purpose of being
eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow
colour, with coarse bristling hairs on their backs; sharp upright ears,
and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. Their hind
legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock or ham, to such
a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot. When they are
in motion their tails are curved high over their backs like those of some
hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from the tip midway,
that does not seem to be matter of accident, but somewhat singular. Their
eyes are jet-black, small, and piercing; the insides of their lips and
mouths of the same colour, and their tongues blue. The bitch has a dew-
claw on each hind leg; the dog has none. When taken out into a field the
bitch showed some disposition for hunting, and dwelt on the scent of a
covey of partridges till she sprung them, giving her tongue all the time.
The dogs in South America are dumb; but these bark much in a short thick
manner like foxes, and have a surly, savage demeanour like their
ancestors, which 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 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, 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 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 foetid 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 dogs over
their carrion, and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers to
remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.