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LIST OF VOLUMES *
, OF THE
NATURALIST’S LIBRARY,
{ THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY WERE PUBLISHED.
j HUMMING- BIRDS, Vol. L., Thirty-six Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Mahon of LINNÆUS. >
. MONKEYS, Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Por- trait and Memoir of BUFFON.
. HUMMING-BIRDS, Vol. IL, Thirty-two Coloured
= Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of PENNANT.
. LIONS, TIGERS, &c., Thirty-eight Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of CUVIER.
. PEACOCKS, PHEASANTS, TURKEYS, &c., Thirty Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of ARISTOTLE.
JI BIRDS OF THE GAME KIND, Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Sir Tuomas STAMFORD RAFFLES. :
. FISHES OF THE PERCH GENUS, &c., Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Sir JosErH BANKS.
. COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS (Beetles), Thirty- shee" Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of Ray.
. COLUMBIDZ (Pigeons), Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of PLiny.
. BRITISH DIURNAL LEPIDOPTERA (Butterflies), Thirty-six Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of WERNER.
. RUMINATING ANIMALS, containing DEER, ANTE- LOPES, CAMELS, &c., Thirty- -five Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of CAMPER.
XII. RUMINATING ANIMALS; containing Goars, SHEEP, Witp and Domzstic CATTLE, &¢. &c. "3 Thirty-three Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Jonn HUNTER.
2 LIST OF VOLUMES.
XII. PACHIDERMATA, or Thick-Skinned Quadrupeds ;
consisting of ELEPHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, TAPIRS, &c. &c., on Thirty-one Coloured Plates ; with Por- trait and Memoir of Sir Hans SLOANE.
XIV. BRITISH NOCTURNAL LEPIDOPTERA (Moths, Sphinxes, &c.), Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Mapam MERIAN.
XV. PARROTS, Thirty-two Coloured Plates ; with Por-
trait and Memoir of BEWICK. ‘
XVI. WHALES, Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Por-
' trait and Memoir of LACEPEDE.
XVII. BIRDS OF WESTERN AFRICA, Vol. IL, Thirty- four Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Bruce. ;
` XVHI. FOREIGN BUTTERFLIES, Thirty-three Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of LAMARCK.
XIX. BIRDS OF WESTERN AFRICA, Vol. IL, Thirty- four Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of LE VAILLANT.
XX. BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, Part I., Thirty-six Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Sir ROBERT SIBBALD.
XXI. FLYCATCHERS; their Natural Arrangement and Relations, Thirty-three Coloured Plates; with Por- trait and Memoir of Baron HALLER.
XXII. A HISTORY OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS,
Thirty-six Coloured Plates; with Portrait and. Memoir of ULYSSES ALDROVANDI.
XXTIT. AMPHIBIOUS CARNIVORA ; including the War- Rus and SEALS, and the HERBIVORUS CETACEA, Mermaids, &c., Thirty-three Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of Francois PERON.
XXIV. BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, Part II., Thirty-two Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of WILLIAM SMELLIE.
XXV. DOGS, Vol. I., Thirty-three Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of PALLAS. ;
XXVI. HONEY-BEE, Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of HUBER.
XXVII FISHES, Vol. IL., Particularly their Structure and Economical uses, &c., Thirty-three Coloured Plates ; with Portrait and Memoir of SaAnvrant.
XXVIII. DOGS, Vol. IL, Thirty-two Coloured Plates; with Portrait and Memoir of Don FELIX D’AzARA.
THE
NATURALIST’S LIBRARY.
Lizars'sc.
DON FELIX D'AZARA.
Lngraved tor theNeaturatists U iraty.
T HE
YOL» Ko
EDINBURGH: W. H.LIZARS LONDON, SAMUEL HIGHLEY 32. FLEET STREET. DUBLIN, W. CURRY JUNE & C?
ae I Sn aS a Re re a
NATURALIST’S LIBRARY.
CONDUCTED BY
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE, BART. F. R.S. E., F.L.S., &¢, &e.
MAMMALIA. Toke Kis
DOGS.
CANIDÆ OR GENUS CANIS OF AUTHORS.
INCLUDING ALSO THE GENERA HYÆNA AND PROTELES.
BY
LIEUT.-COL. CHAS. HAMILTON SMITH,
K.H. AND K. W., F.R. AND L.S., PRESIDENT OF THE DEVON AND CORNWALL NAT. HIST. SOCIETY, &e. &e.
EDINBURGH: W. H. LIZARS, 3, ST, JAMES’ SQUARE, S. HIGHLEY, 32, FLEET STREET, LONDON; AND
W. CURRY, JUN. AND CO. DUBLIN.
1840.
EDINBURGH :
PRINTED BY W. H. LIZARS, 3, ST. JAMES’ SQUARE.
THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF
DOGS. CANIDÆ OR GENUS CANIS OF AUTHORS.
INCLUDING ALSO
THE GENERA HY NA AND PROTELES.
BY
LIEUT.-COL. CHAS. HAMILTON SMITH,
K.H. AND K.W., F.R. AND L.S., PRESIDENT OF THE DEVON AND CORNWALL NAT. HIST. SOCIETY, &c. &c.
VOL. II.
ILLUSTRATED BY THIRTY-EIGHT COLOURED PLATES, WITH PORTRAIT AND MEMOIR OF DON FELIX D’AZARA,
EDINBURGH: W. H. LIZARS, 3, ST. JAMES’ SQUARE; S. HIGHLEY, 32, FLEET STREET, LONDON ; AND W. CURRY, JUN. AND CO. DUBLIN.
1840.
ADVERTISEMENT
FROM THE PUBLISHER.
nn
We beg leave again most respectfully to lay before our numerous readers and admirers a new Volume of our favourite Work, upon a subject which we trust ` will be esteemed second to none of its predecessors, not only as regards the beauty and variety of the illustrations, but also on account of the lively in- terest in the literary details, so admirably kept up by the talented and experienced Author. This Volume completes the Natural History. of the CANID&.
Our readers will be doubtless gratified to know that CoroneL Haminron Surry has undertaken to enrich our Work by another Volume, on the Egua (Horses), already in a state of considerable advancement; and that the third Volume on the Birds of Britain and Ireland is also in a forward state.
We are happy also to be enabled to announce that the long promised Volume on the Introduction to Entomology will shortly make its appearance, from the pen of our friend the Rev. James Duncan,
E3 e
x ADVERTISEMENT.
well known to the Patrons of this Work as the author of the Volumes on Beetles, British and Fo- reion Butterflies, and Moths; and we trust it will be found equally as attractive as any of the others just enumerated. We expect to present a rich treat to our readers in the Volume on the Fishes of the Essequibo and the rivers of British Guiana, by Mr. Scoompureu, which was more fully detailed in the second Volume on Ichthyology, lately pub- lished. There are now before the Public eleven Volumes on Ornithology (Birds), ten on Mammalia (Animals), two on Ichthyology (Fishes), and five on Entomology (Insects), making in all, along with the present publication, twenty-eight ; and we ven- ture to assert, that there will be found nowhcre illustrations of these interesting zoological subjects so copious and well selected as in the NaTURALIST's Liprary; and this altogether apart from the very low price at which those branches of knowledge have been imparted to the Public.
The circumstance of the last publication on Fishes having been first ready induced us to bring it out before the present, which arrangement we find has occasioned some inquiries on the part of our subscribers. This arose partly from the time taken up in the transmission of the proof sheets of the present Volume to Plymouth for revision ; but this arrangement will ultimately create no confusion, and we merely notice the circumstance in conse- _ quence of inquiries having been made at us for an explanation.
CONTENTS
THE SECOND VOLUME,
MEMOIR OF Don Friix D’AZARA INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
SUB-GENUS CANIS The Feral Dogs. Canes feri k Feral Dog of Natolia Feral Dog of Russia Feral Dog of St. Domingo. Canis Haitensis, Plate I. The Familiar Dogs, Canis familiares THE WoLF Docs. The Siberian Dog. Canis Sibericus The Esquimaux Dog. Canis Borealis. Plate II. The Iceland Dog. Canis Islandicus .
Xu- CONTENTS.
The Hare-Indian Dog. Canis lagopus The Newfoundland Dog, aijan Breed. Canis Terre Nove. Plate ITI. The Nootka Dog. Canis laniger nobis The Alco Canis Alco. Plate IV. The Shepherd’s, or Sheep-dog. Canis domesticus. Plate V. The Great Wolf-dog The Calabrian Dog . : : The Alpine, or Great St. Beson Dow Plate VI... The Pomeranian Dog. Canis Pomeranus
THe WATCH-DOGS. Canes laniari The Turkman Watch-dog The Boar-hound of Germany. Canis Suillus. Plate VII. The Danish Dog.
Canis glaucus The Matin Dog. Canis laniarius
The Drover, or Cattle-dog of Cuba and Terra — The Techichi of Mexico. Plate IV. . The Black Wolf-dog of the Florida Indians . : Dog of the North American Indians. Plate VIII. .
THE GREYHOUNDS. Canes venatict The Brinjaree Dog . > Bedouin Greyhound of oe Plate IX. Greyhound of various Egyptian Monuments The Russian and Tahtar Breeds. Canis hirsutus
CONTENTS, |
The Scottish Greyhound. Canis Scoticus The Irish Greyhound. Canis Hibernicus . The Grecian Greyhound. Canis Graius = Thè Turkish Greyhound The Egyptian Greyhound The Italian Greyhound. - Canis Italicus The British Greyhound. Canis leporarius, Plate X. The Lurcher, Canis vertagus } The Egyptian Street-dog .
Tae Hounps. Canes sagaces The Oriental Hound. Plate XIL The Blood-hound. Canis sanguinarius. Plate XXXI, Fig. 2. The Talbot . ; 3 3 i The Old Southem Hound 5 The Stag-hound. Plate XXXI. Fig. 1, The Fox-hound. Plate XII. » The Harrier-hound . j; 2 The Beagle. : 5 The Dalmatian, or Cihlidlan, Hate XIII. The Parent of the Modern Coach-dog. Plate XIV. The Turnspit $ ; j The Pointer. Canis avicularis The Setter. Canis Index. Plates XV, and XV.* The Spaniel, < Canis extrarius
The Springer. Plate XVI.
xiv, CONTENTS.
King Charles’s Spanicl. Plate VI. . The Cocker. Plate XY. The Blenheim, or Marlborough The Maltese Dog The Water-dog. ` Canis aquaticus. Plate XX. The Little Barbet . . The Griffin Dog : . The Lion Dog
Tue Cur Does. Canes domestici The Terrier. Canis terrarius. Vignette, and in Plates XVII, XVIII. and XVIII.* ; > The Saufinder, or Boarsearcher The Lapland Cur The Pariah Dog The Poe Dog The New Zealand Dey The Patagonian Dog The Tierra del Fuego Dog
"THe MASTIFFS.
Canes urcant F P The Mastiff of Tibet. Plate XIX. . The English Mastiff The Cuba Mastiff The Bull-dog.
Canis Anglicus. Plate XX.
The Bull-Terrier
The Pug Dog
The Roquet .
The Little Danish Deg.
Canis variegatus The Artois Mongrel .
The Alicant Dog
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D baan J
VOND w oO
eo co
CONTENTS.
SUB-GENUS III. VULPES.
THE FOoxES The Arctic Fox.
Vulpes lagopus The Sooty Fox.
Vulpes fuliginosus .
The Coal Fox.
Vulpes alopex. Plate XXI. The Brant Fox at The Nepal Fox.
Vulpes Hodgsonit .
The Common Fox.
Vulpes vulgaris 4
The Norway Common Fox . - The Cross-Fox of Europe.
: Vulpes crucigera
The Roman Fox.
Vulpes melanogaster The Black Fox The Himalaya Fox.
Vi ulpes Himalaicus The Indian Fox The Syrian Fox.
. Vulpes thaleb. Plate XXI.* The Egyptian Fox.
Vulpes Niioticus. Plate XXI.* The Foxes of America The Red Fox.
Vulpes fulvus 3 The Cross-Fox of America. Vulpes decussatus. Plate XXII. The Silver Fox.
Vulpes argentatus ,
The Little Fox. ~ C. velong 7 The Tri-coloured Fox. Vulpes cinereo argenteus. Plate XXIII. .
XVI CONTENTS.
The Grey Fox. Vulpes cinereus. Plate XXII.* The Brant Fox 7 5
Sup-cenus IV. ÅGRIODUS _ Lalande’s Zerda. Agriodus auritus. Plate XXUL*
SUBGENUS V, LYCAON Lycaon ‘venaticus. Hyæna venatica. Plate XXIV. Lycaon pictus. ; Canis pictus . ;
Genus II. Hyana The Spotted Hyæna. H. crocuta. Plate XXV.. The Striped Hyæna. The Hyena of Atbara _ Hyena vulgaris, Plate XXVI. The Hyzena of Persia and India i The Naked Hyæna of the Deserts of Nubia. - Hyena vulgaris, Plate XXVII. . The Brown Hyena. Hyena fusca. Plate XXVIII. The Strand Hyena. H. villosa. Plate XXIX.
Genus III. PROTELES The Proteles Lalandii. Viverra hyænoides. Plate XXX.
SYNOPSIS
Portrait of AZARA Vignette Title-page
In all Thirty-eight Plates in this Volume.
ADDITIONAL CONTENTS
IN VOLUME TWENTY-SIX, BEES,
Page
Apis Ligustica. Plate XXIV. . Apis Fasciata. s 2 Apis Adansonii, : : : : 3 = Indicator Major, Greater Honey-guide. Plate XXV, Apis Unicolor. A A A 3 = Apis Indica. Apis Peroni. x ; i 5 3 i Tyrannus Intrepidus. King-bird, Plate XXVI. Trigonis Amalthea. Plate XXVII. . A 4 Lecheguana (Polistes) with Nest. Plate XXVIII, Interior of a Mexican Bee’s Nest. Plate XXII. The Ratel ( Viverra Mellivora.) Plate XXIX. . European Bee-Eater ( Merops Apiaster.) Plate XXX.”
Portrait of Huber, Vignette Title-page,
In all thirty-two plates in this volume.
e
273 274 274 278 279 281 282 285 292 295 300 300 301
2
3
ERRATA IN THE'VOLUME ON BEES.
Title-page, for thirty-six Plates, read thirty-two. Advertisement, page 6, line 12, for sister, read daughter. Page 60, line 14, for Pl. 1, fig. 1, read Pl. 1, fig. 2.
64, line 8, for Pl. 9, read Pl. 12.
70, line 20. for Pl. 1, fig. 2, read Pl. Ip digs 104, line 4, for Pl. 15, read Pl. 12, 167, line 21, for Pl. 20, read Pl. 10. 168, line 2 from bottom, for Pl, 13, read Pl. 10. In page 64, the 10th and seven following lines are misplaced, and are a description of Pl. VI. and should be altered thus: “ PI. VI. exhibits a Royal Cell, e, containing a larva,” &c.
MEMOIR
OF
DON FELIX D’AZARA.
Tux circumstance of not the slightest sketch of the illustrious subject of our present Memoir having hitherto appeared in the English tongue, affords sufficient inducement for our endeavouring to pre- sent a short account of his life for the gratification of our readers. Other’ considerations, however, scarcely less powerful, also influence us. Though _ the name of Azara must be familiar to many, the circumstances of his chequered and honourable his- tory are known but to few. He was a Spanish soldier, who, from a variety of incidents, was long detained in the deepest recesses of the South Ame- rican provinces; and whilst there, actively employed in the public service of his country, he most merito- riously improved his singular opportunities, and, self- taught, earned that reputation as a Naturalist for which he is so distinguished. Some account, there- fore, of his eventful life, and his interesting writings, can scarcely fail to meet with a welcome reception. VOL. II. B
18 MEMOIR OF
Don FELIX p Azara was born at Barbunales, near Balbastro, in the province of Aragon, in Spain, on the 18th of May, in the year 1746. His parents, Alexander. € Azara and Marie de Perera, spent a rural life, on their own property, far removed from the more agitating scenes of the world, contented and happy in their retirement. They had two sons, whose early education they superintended, ere they sent them to the neighbouring seminaries; whence they were speedily called to engage in public life, where, in their several departments, they both ac- quired very considerable honour and distinction.
Don Felix first studied in the university of Hu- esca, and was then sent to the military academy of Barcelona. During the course of his education, he scarcely revisited his paternal roof. A few days previous to his birth, his brother, Don Joseph Nico- las, who was then fifteen years of age, had been sent to the university of Salamanca. Thus the brothers never met till the year 1765, when Don Nicolas having obtained, through the influence of _ the minister, Ricardos, the situation of Agent of the king to the court of Rome in certain ecclesiastical matters, passed through Barcelona, and first saw, and scarcely more.than saw, his brother. They were then again separated for the long period of thirty-five years.
A year before this interview, at the age of eighteen, Don Felix had commenced his military career, and had been appointed cadet (that is, a gentleman ‘volunteer, acting as a common soldier, to learn the
DON FELIX D AZARA. 19
art of war) in the Galician regiment of infantry, on the Ist September, 1764. On the 3d November, 1767, he was gazetted ensign in the engineer corps ; and on the 28th September, 1775, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.
It was when holding this rank, that he bore a part in the Spanish attack upon Algiers. Among the first of those who disembarked, he was struck by a large ball, of copper, and was left as dead upon the spot. The attentions, however, of a friend, and the boldness of a sailor, who extracted the ball with his knife; revived him; but he afterwards experienced no common degree of suffering, and ere long the third part of one of his ribs was extracted. Five years elapsed before the wound was healed, and five years later it again broke out in America, when an addi- tional portion of the rib was discharged. On the 5th of February, 1776, he attained the rank of captain.
The following year, the courts of Spain and Portugal, which were always at war concerning the limits of their respective possessions in South’ America, having fixed the basis of a treaty, which was speedily afterwards ratified, commissioners were appointed by both parties, to determine on the spot the limits of the two countries, conformably to the conditions of the treaty. “ Being at St. Se- bastian,” says Don Felix, “ in 1781, with the rank of leutenant-colonel of engineers, I received, du- ring the night, an order from the General, to set off immediately for Lisbon, there to present myself to.our ambassador. I set off at daybreak, with-
<20 MEMOIR OF
out my books or baggage, and arrived safely at my destination. The ambassador informed me I was now to be despatched to South America, with Joseph Verela and two other officers, engaged in the same commission, and concerning the particulars of which the viceroy of Buenos Ayres would inform us. To this last city we were to proceed without delay, and we embarked immediately in a Portu- guese vessel, being at war with England, and arrived safely at Rio Janeiro. I took out with me a de- spatch which was toj be opened under the line, and which informed me that the king had conferred on me the rank of captain in the navy, it being judged right that all the commissioners should be marine officers.” From Rio Janeiro they again speedily embarked for Monte Video, where they met with the viceroy, and received their particular instructions. Tn conjunction with the Portuguese commissioners, they were to fix, in terms of the preliminary treaty of peace of 1777, the line of demarcation of the ‘respective parties, from the sea, not far from the mouth of La Plata, to beyond the junction of the Quapore and Mamore, where they together form the Madera, a tributary of the mighty Amazon,—a stretch from about the thirty-fifth to the eleventh degree of south latitude. This immense line of frontier was divided into five parts; Verela was ‘appointed to the two southern, whilst the next two were assigned to Azara. :
“ After this,” says Azara, “ the viceroy sent me alone to the great river San Pedro, a distance not
DON FELIX DAZARA. 2I
much short of five hundred miles, to the capital of the province of the same name, that I might con- cert, with the Portuguese general, the best method of commencing and conducting our labours. After having performed this service, on the very night of my return to the Plata, I was ordered to set off as soon as possible to Assumption, the capital of — Paraguay, to make the necessary preparations for the Portuguese commissioners. The Spanish engi- neers soon completed the task assigned to them ; but as the Portuguese, by the strict execution of the treaty, would have been obliged to abandon the districts which they occupied, they sought every eccasion to delay as long as possible the termination of their labours, and to elude the terms of their en- gagement.” In all this, instead of being checked, they were decidedly assisted by the carelessness and culpable connivance of the Spanish governors. All this placed Don Felix in a very distressing position, in which, however, he was determined not passively to succumb, and if he could not employ himself usefully in one way, he resolved to do so in another. “ Becoming now,” says he, “ acquainted with their artifices, ‘and perceiving that instead of promoting the settlement of the limits, their object was to pro- long the operation indefinitely, by all kinds of delays, by appeals to Europe, and by the most groundless and ridiculous ‘pretexts, I bethought me how I might best improve the long delays which were in this way occasioned; and conceiving that the viceroys would neither grant me their permission
E29 MEMOIR OF
nor their help, in the fear that I should abuse their condescendence, I resolyed to follow out my own scheme, and to take the whole responsibility upon myself; personally meeting also all the attendant expenses, and travelling without their leave, while at the same time I did not for a moment lose sight of the grand object with which I was intrusted. The scheme to which Azara here alludes, and which he determined if possible to execute, was nothing else than a complete delineation and de- scription of the vast Spanish dominions in the cen- tral parts of South America, comprehending a region of about fifteen hundred miles in length and about nine hundred in breadth. True, he had now attained the meridian of his days, and nearly twenty years had been spent in the varied duties of a soldiers life; he had acquired a more than usual share of rank and distinction, and on this he might have satisfactorily reposed, contented with the consci- entious discharge of that honourable commission with which he was intrusted. But views so limited . were wholly alien to his tastes and disposition. Placed in a continent so much unknown to science, and where his curiosity was every day provoked by some new wonder, he could not remain at rest, nor allow the occasion to escape without attempt- ing to improve it. Deeply conscious of his want of preliminary qualifications, he yet determined to do what he could; and his history affords a fine example of what a person of ordinary educa- tion and intelligence may achieve, by dint of steadi-
DON FELIX DAZARA. 23
ness and perseverance, His plan, which was laid upon a broad basis, seems to have been devised with great wisdom, as it was executed with much success. The special duty on which he was en- gaged, naturally qualified him for geographical in- vestigations, and his first object, in addition to his labour on the boundaries, was to ascertain with all possible accuracy the geographical relations of those vast regions which he had occasion to traverse, and which were nearly unknown. With this laborious undertaking, he associated others scarcely less ex- tensive. The physical and moral condition of the inhabitants, including the native Indians, the de- scendants of the Spanish conquerors, and the mixed breeds, in their varied social and political relations, was scarcely a less interesting inquiry. To these he added historical investigations of the public records of the countries, and a critical examination, on the spot, of the popular accounts. And, finally, he de- termined to, survey the whole range of animated nature, including the quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, and insects of the continent, which alone has obtained for him a distinguished name as a Zoolo- gist ; while he did not forget the kindred branches of meteorology, geolegy, and botany. These were wide fields, over which the best educated modern naturalists could scarcely venture to expatiate, but which Azara, unprepared as he was, determined to cultivate as best he could. In these various pur- suits, he has been classed with the Baron de Hum- boldt; and the comparison is the more creditable,
24 MEMOIR OF
when we consider his different circumstances and education. “ Amidst the memorable events,” says Walckenaer, “ which distinguish the history of the beginning of the nineteenth century, the peaceable annals of science will not forget the sudden revolu- tion which has been effected in our knowledge of South America, and the names of Humboldt and Azara will be placed at the head of this interesting recital.” For twenty years he was engaged in these varied and noble pursuits, and to the results of his labours we must now bespeak attention. Though we may be able to produce but little concerning Azara’s personal history, yet if it be true that the aandiwork of the painter and sculptor may be ap- pealed to as their memorials, surely with not less Justice we may direct attention to the patient in- quiries and matured thoughts of the busy student of Nature’s works, and maintain that in them “ he has weaved for himself the wreath of his glory.”
We may here at once enumerate the works pub- lished by Azara, which are more remarkable for their importance than their number. The first were two works, in his native tongue, on the natural history of the Spanish provinces in South Ame- rica, the former, in two volumes, on the Mammalia ; and the latter, in three, devoted to Ornithology. Several years afterwards, he published his other work, somewhat more miscellaneous perhaps, but still more important, under the title of Voyages dans lAmerique Meridionale, in which are included his investigations on the climate of those regions, and
DON FELIX DAZARA. ` 25
the other interesting topics before enumerated. This work, which was published in French, was accom- panied by a valuable atlas, of twenty-five plates, containing the maps illustrative of his geographical labours, and the plans of towns, rivers, and har- bours, the result of his statistical inquiries; as also a considerable number of admirable plates of those animals and birds which were least known. This work was superintended by his brother Nicolas, at that time ambassador from the court of Madrid to that of France, and by the well knowu naturalist Walckenaer, who seems to have performed his part of the task with great fidelity and care. To these - volumes he subjoined the Natural History of the Province of Cochabamba, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, drawn up by the German naturalist Tadeo Haenk; and which contained much new — and important matter.
We must now trace our authors footsteps in these various investigations and labours, the results of which are contained in his writings; and though the outline we can give of these productions must be slight, and our exposition too much like bringing a brick whereby to display the character of the edi- fice, yet it will at once appear that Azara was no common man, and that having been placed in ex- tremely favourable circumstances, he improved them far beyond what could have been supposed possible,
On the important mission which was the occasion of his long residence in these regions, we will not dwell longer than to say, that notwithstanding all
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> gg MEMOIR OF
neatly uniform cascade, in its extent of 2226 feet, but in the form of a single and enormous prism, full and solid, reaching 180 feet in all its dimen- sions.
There are no parts of Azara’s works more valu- able in themselves, and none, we believe, will be more generally esteemed, than those which bear on the history of man. We allude not only to his historical researches and criticisms, properly so called, descriptive of the conduct of the early Spa- nish settlers and rulers, and of the unfortunate natives, though these must ever be highly appre- ciated; nor do we refer to his statistical statements, and to his accounts of the famous settlements of the aborigines, made at one time by the Jesuits, and at another by the civil government, and which will continue, as they have done, to command a very general attention ; but we apply our remark chiefly to his laborious investigations concerning the natu- ral history of man, especially of the native races,— with their physical and moral character, their cir- cumstances, habits, powers, manners, &c. Few were ever placed in fairer fields for investigation, and few ever cultivated them with more assiduity and success. Some of the tribes of central America appear to have sunk nearly as far down the scale of human wretchedness and: ignorance as is possible, and of these, as well as the less degraded, we have here the laborious observations of a most acute observer. These several inquiries occupy nearly the whole of the second volume of his French work ;
DON FELIX D AZARA. ene
in advancing to which, we regret it is neeessary to stop for an instant, and iede to an attack upon its character which, as we conceive, has been most - unjustly made. |
Mr. Southey, in his “‘ History of Brazil,” when making the freest use of our authors work on the very differeint provinces of Paraguay and Buenos Ayres, not unfrequently introduces such statements as the following :—“ What Azara says on the sub- ject is to be received with great suspicion.” —“ Azara repeats a silly charge against the Jesuits, which he wishes to make the sendin believe, though he evi- dently does not, and certainly could not believe himself; but it came in aid of one of his theories, and therefore he would not lose it.”—“ Azara says so and so,” —“ but this I have no doubt is false.”— (Vol. ii. 336, 343, 351.) Language such as this (reflecting far more on the individual who uses it than on him to whom it is applied), unsupported by the slightest proof, so far as we have observed, in any part of Mr. Southey’s massy tomes, merits, in our opinion, severe censure. We shall meet these grave charges, for the present, by merely quoting a few sentences from Azara’s works (written of course with- out any particular reference to the Poet Laureate), which very much bear the stamp of sincerity and truth. In writing to his French editor, he says, “ I de- rive a particular satisfaction from labouring at this work, animated not by the aim and ambition which frequently stimulates authors, viz. the desire of im- mortalizing themselves, but simply by the pleasure
VOL. IIL. c
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= RR A in ee. alert ee aT | fa Sng Beat ent ne Nee ome ace a —— = wn > æ a — —— a
40 MEMOIR OF
defence, he communicates it to the others, who eXe- cute it, if they approve. But no one is forced to take part in it, and no penalty is exacted from those who absent themselves. They have studs, and abun- dance of horses: many of them have bridles, with ' iron bits. The men ride on the bare backs; the women use a very simple hair cloth. Their only weapons are a lance, eleven feet long, with a sharp iron point, and very short bows. When we consi- der that the Charruas have given so much trouble to the Spaniards, and have spilt more of their blood than the armies of the Incas or of Montezuma, it will be concluded that they are a very numerous nation.. This, however, is far from being the case, and at present they have not more than 400 warriors. For their subjugation we have often employed more than a thousand veterans, either in one body, or in distinct parties, and much carnage has been the consequence ; but there they still are, unsubdued and dreaded. _ “ They never remain in a state of celibacy ; and their marriages are effected with the greatest sang froid. The suitor requests his bride at the hands of her parents; and she never refuses, however old or ugly he may be. Upon a man marrying, he forms a distinct family, and works for their sup- port; for previously he lived at the expense of his parents, in complete idleness, without going to war, or assisting at their public meetings. Poly- ' gamy -is freely practised; they teach nothing to, and keep nothing from their children, who, on
DON FELIX PAZARA. 4l
their part, have no kind of respect for their parents ; herein maintaining their universal principle, of every one doing as he pleases, without being hin- dered by any consideration or authority.
“ The heads of families, and they alone, to the exclusion of the women and children, very often get drunk with brandy, or chicka, which is pre- pared from honey. The duration of their lives _ appears longer than ours. They are not, however, without their doctors, whose only remedy is sucking over the stomach of the patient with great force, thereby extracting the malady.
“ When an Indian dies he is buried sith his arms, his clothes and furniture. Frequently his best horse is slaughtered upon his tomb. The nearest relatives weep much, and their grief is — poignant. If he be a father, husband, or adult brother, the daughters, and any sisters who are married, together with the wife, cut off one of the joints of a finger; this they do for every death, beginning with the little finger. They also wound their arms, breasts, and sides, with the knife or spear of the deséased. They then pass two months in their booths in retirement, and do little else than weep, taking little nourishment. I have not seen one grown up woman among them with her fingers uninjured, or without many wounds on her body. The husband, again, does not mourn for his wife; nor a father for his younger children. But should these be grown up, then they conceal themselves, quite naked, for two whole days in
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« 44 MEMOIR OF
engage in war, and never appear in military array, except to demand peace. It is said that the whole of this people swim naturally: though we must add, for the benefit of our younger readers, not more than others might do, and many individuals have done. This, sometimes most important feat, is best accomplished by keeping the body nearly erect in the water, throwing the head back, and keeping the mouth and nose only above the surface, and then treading along with the feet, and pawing with the hands under water as a dog does.” But hear Azara.— I should not omit what my companion in travel, a curate, once told me. ‘I took,’ said he; ‘this Guarany youth when only four years of age, and have had him ever since: he is now fourteen. He has never seen a river, nor any sheet of water where he could swim ; for there is no such in my parish, from which he has never moved, and I have never lost sight of him for a single day. I shall notwithstanding tell him to swim across the river (which was as broad and deep as the Seine at Paris), and you will find that he will do it at once. -It was no sooner said than done; and I witnessed the boy do it, without either hesitation or difficulty.” Of the Guasarapoes, Azara informs us that men and women go quite naked, They cut their hair so close, that they appear as if shaven. They have neither religion, laws, obligatory customs, nor chiefs. They have no domestic animals, nor agriculture, nor do they hunt. They live on wild rice and fish ; and are full of energy, pride, and courage. The Guanas
DON FELIX D AZARA. 45
are one of the most numerous of these nations. Some say they amount to 20,000; but according to my calculation there are only 8,300, of them. They receive travellers, whoever they are, with much hospitality ; lodging them, feeding them, and — helping them on their journey. They have horses, cows, and sheep; and live by agriculture. The Mbayas are usually about five feet eight inches in stature. Their forms and proportions appear to me most perfect, and far superior to those of Europeans, or any other people I have seen. They regard themselves as the noblest people upon the face of the earth, the most generous, the most faithful and valiant; and they consider the Europeans in all respects inferior.”
It would be easy to multiply these extracts on the several nations to an almost indefinite extent; ‘but we must have done. Our author has a chapter of general reflections upon their condition. Their physical powers he holds in high admiration. “ I admire,” he says, “ their superior stature, the size and elegance of their forms and proportions, which = ade equalled in any part of the world.” Nor is he singular in this opinion. Sir Francis Head has’
more recently said, During my gallop in South
America, I had little time or opportunity to see
many of the Indians ; yet from what I did hear
and see, I sincerely believe they are as fine a set of _
men as ever existed, under the circumstances in
which they are placed.” * As it regards their mental * Rough Notes, &c.
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— Š ee
SSS a A o
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“ Their ignorance of their origin and past history isextreme, as may be illustrated by the opinion of the Payaguas, a powerful nation which has given its name to the river Paraguay. Our first father, was the fish we call Pacu ; yours, was the one you call Dorado ; that of the Guaranies, a toad. Hence the lighter and more beautiful colour of your skin ; for we surpass you in all other respects, and hence the despicable character of the Guaranies.
“ The condition of the women is, in every respect, most degraded, and female virtue is unknown. They marry at the age of nine, ten, and eleven years. Infanticide likewise is carried to the most deplorable extreme. A Méayas mother will not attempt to rear more than a son and daughter, and these the last of her progeny. Some nations have,
` by this dreadful practice, been exterminated. The Fuaicurus was wont to be one of the most famous of the nations: it was one of the most numerous, proudest, strongest, and most warlike. They lived. by the chase. Of this nation there now exists but one man! the best made man in the world, stand- ing six feet and a half high. He has three wives. The extermination of this superb nation has arisen not merely from their constant wars with the Spa- niards, but from the execrable practice above referred to. How melancholy that the finest na- tions in the world are thus destroying them-
selves.” * Azara likewise studied, with an observant eye,
* Vol. ii, 146-7,
DON FELIX DAZARA. ` 49
the two great remaining classes, viz. the whites, or pure descendants of the Spaniards, and the miaed breeds. These last are again subdivided into two,— the Metis, or mixed breed of the Spaniard and In- dian, and the Mulatto, the cross between the Spa- niard and Negro. “ The Metis,” says he, “ appear to be somewhat superior to the European Spaniard in their height, in the elegance of their form, and even in the fineness of their skin. I also think that these Metis have more ingenuity, sagacity, in- telligence, and vigor than the Creoles; that is to say, the children of Spanish parents born in the country. The Mulatto, too, I find has an advan- tage, both in physical and moral powers, over the mixed progeny of the natives and the Negroes: they are more active, agile, strong, and lively, than their parents. Their habitual vices are a love of play, drunkenness, and pilfering; but some are truly honest.” Our author maintains that the Spa- niards have treated these races, and their slaves likewise, with the greatest lenity and kindness ; forming, in this respect, a perfect contrast to the Portuguese. The free Mulattoes are, by law, ranked last in the scale, though not in general estimation, which places the Indians below all, and regards the free Mulattoes and the Negroes as equal.
We shall not attempt to follow our author in his review of the native Spaniards, and shall confine our remarks to a very few sentences concerning the shepherds of the country, who claim descent from Europeans. “These shepherds are occupied in
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. guarding about twelve million of cattle, about three million of horses, and a considerable number of sheep. Here I do not include about two million of wild oxen, and the wild horses which are innu- merable. The domestic troops belong to private individuals; and an average pasturage (estancia) extends to four or five square leagues. Every troop has a master-shepherd, called the Captain, and an under one for every thousand head of cattle. The former is usually married, the others are not ; except such as are Negroes, or people of colour, or those Indians who have been connected with the missionary settlements. I believe that no woman m this society preserves her chastity after she is eight years old; and those reputed Spanish are not better than the others. The father and the whole family sleep in the same chamber. As these herds- men are twelve, thirty, and even a hundred miles from chapel, they seldom or never go to mass. They themselves often baptize their children ; and I have been asked, when galloping over the plains, to perform the ceremony. When they do go to mass, they attend on horseback, the door being kept open for their convenience. In their houses, they have usually no other furniture than a pitcher for water, a horn for drinking, a wooden spit for roast- ing their meat, and a little copper-kettle for boiling the water with which they infuse their Paraguay herb. They usually sit upon their heels, with their limbs bent under them, or upon the skull of a horse or ox. They use no kind of vegetable food, saying
DON FELIX D AZARA. 51
itis hay, and taunting the European, because he eats like a horse. The master shepherds have an ample Supply of garments; but the herdsmen have neither jacket, waistcoat, trowsers, or ought else than a — piece of cloth tied round their loins. Many of them have no shirt; but most can muster a hat, with drawers, a poncho, and half-boots. The women go barefooted; and, to say the least of it, are far from clean. Their dress usually is a chemise, at- tached round the waist with a band, but without sleeves; often they have no change. <A child is scarcely eight days old when it is taken on horse- back, and galloped over the plains: this exercise is often repeated, till the infant is mounted alone upon the old and quiet horses. Thus they are reared in independence and ignorance. They know nothing of measures, calculation, or rules, and dis- like the society of those who do. They disregard shame, decency, and the ceremonies of civilized life. Education they have none, and don’t know what it is to obey. They attach little value to life, and death is indifferent. I have seen a man go to. be hanged with the greatest sang froid. They are exceedingly hospitable; and if a stranger come their way, they lodge and feed him, often without ask- ing who he is, or whither he is going, and he may remain with them for months. They play high, and with the greatest keenness, often losing every thing, to their shirt, if they have one. When they think of getting married, the bridegroom borrows linen for the ceremony, and on leaving the chape?
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returns it to the lender. Their bed is a hide stretched on the ground; and often they have neither house nor furniture. When spirits are sold in any house, it is called a Pulperias ; and these are the great rendezvous for dissipation and play. The whole company is usually invited to drink; a large vessel is filled with brandy, and passed round the circle. This ceremony is repeated as long as they have a farthing, and no one is excused. They have the greatest disinclination to any employment which they cannot pursue on horseback, and at the gallop. In fact they can scarcely walk, and never do so without repugnance. When they assemble at the pulperias, or elsewhere, it is on horseback, though they may converse for hours. When they fish, it is always on horseback, even when they throw the net, in the middle of the water: When they draw water from the well, they attach the cord to the horse, and don’t dismount. Should they want mortar, and not more than would go into a hat, they bruise it with the horse’s feet, without dis- mounting ; in short, they do every thing on horse- back, and hence are the first of horsemen. Their feats with the dasso are well known.”
From these slight sketches it will be seen, that whether in relation to the pure Spaniards, -the mixed breeds, or the native Indians, these investi- gations of Azara are of the most important charac- ter, and will be highly prized by every one inte- rested in the natural history of our race. Man is here found in one of the rudest states in which he
DON FELIX D AZARA. 53
ever has been observed, or, perhaps, can exist. The degradation of the descendants of the Spaniards, is not less remarkable than the wretched condition, of the native Indians. Upon the whole, a rich mine is presented, whose working will well repay the curious inquirer. We must entirely pass over the remaining portions of this work which treat of the history of the conquest, the early settlement of the country, its government, both civil and eccle- siastical, together with descriptions of the principal towns in the several provinces. .
We now proceed to consider the services which Azara rendered to Zoology.
His labours in this department were communi- cated to the public in a great work, which he modestly styles “ Notes on the Natural History of Paraguay and La Plata,” and which was pub- lished, in Spanish, at Madrid;—the two first volumes, on quadrupeds, in the year 1802, and the remaining three, on birds, at a later date.*
* It should here be noted, that the first edition of Azara’s work on quadrupeds, the one which has been most generally quoted, was, contrary to his wishes, and while still very in- complete, published by M. L. E. Moureau St. Mery, ina French translation. This happened in the following manner : Whilst the work was unfinished, Azara sent it to his brother, Don Nicolas, for the purpose of being submitted to the criti- cism of some eminent naturalist, that after this, and receiving his own additions and corrections, it might see the light. The French naturalist, delighted with the work, and ignorant, of Azara’s intentions, immediately published it. For the errors
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The latter portion,—that on birds,—was speedily translated into French, by the celebrated Sonnini of Monacour, who added valuable notes, and it appeared as a second part of the French work already described. The former treatise, that on quadrupeds, as mentioned in the note below, has become exceedingly scarce; but we are happy to ‘state that the desideratum thus occasioned: is in the course of being supplied, by a translation into English, with notes, the first part of which has lately appeared.*
The dedication of this work to his brother, affords Azara an opportunity of speaking feelingly on some of the circumstances of his history. “ My DEAR
of the work, accordingly, Azara holds that he is not responsi- ble. (Voyage, t. 1, p. 244.) The edition of St. Mery has long been out of print, and the Spanish work is hardly less scarce, “It is impossible to procure a copy out of Spain ; and even in that country it is not often met with.” (See Mr. Hunter’s preface, p. 10, where the titles of both works are given in full, and are dated 1802.) There must, however, be some mistake as it regards the second production. Azara, in ` his French work, concerning which he was corresponding
in 1806, and which was published in 1809, decidedly states that it was then in manuscript (T. i. p. 383.) And Walcke- naer adds—it has since been published in Spanish. (Ib. 384.)
* The Natural History of the Quadrupeds of Paraguay and the River La Plata, translated from the Spanish of Don Felix a’ Azara, with a Memoir of the Author, a Sketch of the Coun- try, and numerous Notes, by W. Perceval Hunter, Esq. F. G.S., Z.S., Memb. Geo. Soc. of France. In 2 vols. Vol. i. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1838. The memoir, we may add, has not yet appeared.
DON FELIX D AZARA. 55
Niconas,—We had scarcely seen the light when we Were separated; nor have we, during the whole course of our lives, met, or had any communica- tion with each other, save in Barcelona, for the, short space of two days, and that by accident. No less separated have been our paths through life. You have lived in the great world, and by the important offices you have held, and by your ta- ‘lents, deeds, and virtues, have become famous in Spain, and out of it; whilst I, without obtaining ostensible employment, and without any opportu- nity of making myself known to you or others, have spent the best twenty years of. my life im one of the remotest corners of the earth, forgotten even by my friends, without books, or rational inter- course, continually travelling through deserts and immense and frightful woods, holding communica- tion only with the birds and the wild beasts. Of these I have written a history, which I now send and dedicate to you, that you may become ac- quainted with me, or, at all events, with the nature of my labours * * *. That you may be happy is the prayer of your brother Ferrx. Madrid, 1802.”
The author’s preface supplies valuable informa- tion as to the disposition in which the work was prepared. “ Between the twenty-fourth and thirty- sixth degrees of south latitude, and the fifty-seventh and sixtieth of west longitude, I did not omit to describe the quadrupeds I could procure by dili- gence or money. I commenced this task after
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mature deliberation, without allowing myself to be imposed upon by what others might have writ- ten, and with a view of employing myself in some useful occupation. T spent in these pursuits, the whole of my leisure time from the year 1782 till 1801, making it my first object to tell the truth, without the least exaggeration; making myself acquainted with the characters, and then noting them down, with the animals under my eye. I
have been scrupulously careful in stating the forms -
and colours, from having observed that they are very constant. As to the habits, they are far the most difficult to. ascertain; for the people of this country, who are careless in every thing, almost always relate fables and inferences instead of truth. In this part of my work, I have given as certain only what I have myself observed ; and of the infi- nity of stories I have heard, I have noted down only the few which appeared certain.”
Our previous pages have detailed at sufficient length, the annoying circumstances which led Azara, in what he considered his state of banishment, to betake himself to these investigations. They were commenced solely for amusement, and without any thoughts of his becoming an author. At first he only preserved the skins, and transmitted them to Europe. But finding this unproductive of benefit, he began to write out minute descriptions of each as he encountered them. His mode of description was original, but it soon became excellent ; and the number of specimens rapidly accumulating on his
EC ae
DON FELIX D’AZARA. 57
hand, he was forced to group them into a kind of system. It was under these circumstances that a happy accident put him in possession of the Spanish translation of Buffon, the most celebrated work of the age on the subject, and the first and only one our self-taught naturalist had ever seen. The avi- dity with which he perused its pages may readily be conceived ; and finding in it many deficiencies and inaccuracies, especially in connexion with those re- gions with which he was most familiar, he recast his work afresh, making at the same time such remarks as the examination of Buffon suggested. Thus his treatise very naturally acquired somewhat of a criti- cal tone ; a circumstance which has given occasion to censure. His own answer, however, appears abundantly satisfactory. “ My strictures are made not so much on the Count de Buffon, as on those travellers and naturalists from whom he copied the errors I attack. Even were they his own, they would not detract from his merit; nor ought it to excite astonishment, that a man who wrote with infinite elegance on so many and such extended sub- jects, and who had not the same opportunities which I have had to examine some, should not succeed in all. Ifit should be found that I have been at all wanting in the respect due to so illustrious a per- sonage, I beg it may be attributed to the love I bear to truth, to my unwillingness that it should be at all departed from, and to my having written under the influences of melancholy, when it appeared I was destined never to escape from those wild re-
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gions.” * And his friend Walckenaer, speaking from personal knowledge, says, “No man is more gentle and modest, or freer from every thing like scientific rancour, more ready to doubt, and to retract when he finds he has been wrong.”
So soon as this work appeared, it was hailed as a very valuable acquisition to the records of Natural History. In proof of this, we need only mention that the individual who was appointed to report con- cerning it to the first class of the French Institute, did so in the following terms :—“ M. Azara has been the first to point out the conformation and ha- bits of many animals of which previously we pos- sessed only very imperfect descriptions and incorrect drawings, and of which we really knew little more than the names. He has also added many species to our catalogue, which were previously unknown to naturalists, which it was of consequence we should be acquainted with, and concerning which we could least have hoped for information.”
We can supply only a short specimen of the kind of information to be obtained from this celebrated treatise, in a few meagre extracts from Mr. Hunters translation, of which we are happy to avail our- selves.t ;
The work contains a minute account of seventy-
ay Preface. Hunter, u. a.
+ One volume only of this translation (it will extend to two) has hitherto been published. Mr. Hunter has given the prece- dence to the non-indigenous animals introduced by the Spa- nish conqucrors.
DON FELIX D'AZARA. 59
seven species of' native mammifere, and seven spe- cies of reptiles, with numerous details respecting the European animals which were introduced by the Spaniards. As to the plan pursued, there is a me- moir devoted to each kind of animal, which is sub- divided into three parts. First, an account is given of its habits, comprehending its habitat, food, num- ber of its young, dispositions, its habits in confine- ment, its enemies, and the domestic uses, if any, ‘to which it is applied; 2d, There is a detailed description, from specimens recently killed, of its external characters ; and, lastly, a critical examina- tion of the accounts given by Buffon and other writers. This last part forms by far the largest por- tion of the whole; and though frequently too prolix, supplies much information.*
The non-indigenous animals introduced to notice are the Horse, Ass, Mule, Cow, Sheep, Goat, and Deg. “ The- wild horses congregate every where in such immense herds, that it is no exaggeration to say they sometimes amount to 12,000 individuals. They are most troublesome and prejudicial; for, besides consuming vast quantities of pasture, they gallop up to the domesticated horses wherever they see them, call and caress them with their low affec- tionate neighings, thus throwing them into confu- sion, and easily induce them to incorporate with their troops, among which they remain ever after- ` wards. ‘Thus it often happens, that travellers find themselves unable to continue their journey ; their
* Hunter, p. xv,
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relays of fresh horses, which are always driven be- fore them, being enticed away, and carried off by the wild herds. The Indians of the Pampas eat them as food. The Spaniards kill the most corpu- lent, to make fires of their bones and fat, in the districts where there is a scarcity of wood. Buffon, after stating they are gregarious, adds, < That each troop, by common consent, submits itself to a chief, who guides, commands, and directs their move- ments; making them form in line of battle, by files, companies, battalions, and brigades.’ The fact, how- ever, is, that each horse appropriates to himself as many mares as he can, and takes care of them, keeping them always united, and fighting with any of his brethren who dispute his possession of them. Each herd of wild horses, therefore, is composed of a multitude of small troops, a little separated, yet almost united, which draw near together in action, that troop advancing first which happens te be nearest to the point of attack. The price of the common domestic horses in the plains of Buenos Ayres is about a hundred pence (two pesos); the mares are sold at fourpence-halfpenny each (two rials). Ihave heard for a fact, that a short time ago there was a horse at Santa Fé de la Vora Cruz, which had two horns like a bull, four inches long, sharp, erect, and growing close to the ears; and ‘that another from Chili was brought to Vedela, a native of Buenos Ayres, with strong horns, three inches high. This horse, they tell me, was re- markably gentle, but, when offended, attacked like
DON FELIX D AZARA. 61
abull. Vedela sent this animal to some of his relatives in Mendoza, who intended to propagate the breed: I am not aware of the result.
“ The Cow supplies here almost all the necessaries of life. Few of the inhabitants eat bread, or any other kind of food except roast-beef. Of the horns they make glasses, spoons, and combs; and a bung being placed at the larger end, and a hole opened at the tip, they serve as jars. Of the leather, all their ropes and cords, anda great part of their do- mestic utensils are made, such as canisters, chests, &c. Of the raw hide they manufacture a kind of square boat, with which they cross their great rivers. They sleep on these hides, and make, doors and windows, and very often their dwellings. The fat supplies the place of oil; of the tallow they make candles and soap, and the bones are used instead of other fuel. Their skulls are the only seats and benches. Of the milk, in Paraguay, a great many stewed dishes are made, as are butter and cheese. From 800,000 to 1,000,000 hides are annually ex- ported. When a supply of these is required, a troop of men on horseback sets forth, and arranging them- selves in two long files which meet at an angle, they hem in the cattle. The individual who comes last in the angle, is called the Oortador, and hamstrings the cattle-with a long cutting instrument, shaped at the end like a half moon. When thus engaged, they do not cease galloping; and when a suficient number of cattle are obtained, they retrace their steps, and the Cortador kills the animals with his
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chuzo, a sharp spear, and the others alight and strip them, sometimes of the suet, and always of the hide, at which operation they are very expert.
« Among the Dogs, the ovejeros, or sheep-dogs, are particularly deserving of notice; because in this country, where there are no shepherds, ‘they act in their place, and take charge of the flocks. Early in the morning, they drive them from the fold, conduct them to the plain, accompany them the whole day, keeping them united ; and when numerous they sur- round the flock, defending them from birds of prey, from wild dogs, and other beasts, even from man, and every kind of injury. At sunset they conduct the sheep back again to the fold, when they lay themselves down upon the ground and sleep, and pass the night in their watchful care over them. If any of the young lambs lag behind, they carefully _ take them up in their mouths, and carry them fora time, returning again and again, if need be, until none remain. z
Of the indigenous animals of South America, the older naturalists were wont to assert, that they were “an inferior dwarfish race.” Azara combats this opinion. Among other instances, he shows that his Jaguar* may dispute the palm with the noblest, in the attributes of bold ferocity and power. “One | day,” he remarks, “ when shooting on the plain, I was told that one of these animals had just killed a horse. I went instantly to the spot, and found he had already commenced his repast. I did not see
* Filis onca, Lin.
DON FELIX D AZARA. 63
the jaguar, and therefore made my people draw the horse to within a stone-throw of a tree, purposing to return and wait for him. I had scarcely gone, however, half a mile, when they came and informed me, that the jaguar having swam across a broad and deep river, had taken up the carcass in his mouth, and dragging it along; without apparent effort, for seventy paces, re-entered the river, and carried it off to the woods on the other side. It is universally asserted in the country, that the jaguar draws along, with the greatest facility, not only one dead horse, or bullock, but two, when they happen to be tied together. They also state, that if it has once tasted human flesh, it ever afterwards prefers it to all other food. Certain it is, that since I have been in Paraguay, the few jaguars remaining have devoured six men, carrying them off from the middle of their companions, whilst warming themselves by the fire. They prey upon asses, horses, and oxen, killing them in an extraordinary way. They pounce upon the neck of their victim, and placing one paw on the occiput and. the other on the muzzle, crush the skull in a moment. This animal is usually hunted with immense packs of dogs, amounting to a hundred. Sometimes it retires to the thick jungle, and there obstinately remains. On such occasions, some one is bold enough to follow ; when wrapping a sheep-skin round his left arm, he enters the jungle with his chuzo, and bending his body, presents its point to the animal's breast. The jaguar often rushes upon it; but, be this as it may
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the man follows it as close as possible and dispatches it. Those, however, who hazard these bold adven- tures, generally perish sooner or later in one of them.” *
Though in our enumeration of Azara’s zoological works we have given the first place to that on quadrupeds, yet in magnitude and importance it is inferior to the one on birds. This very decidedly is the author's own estimate. “ The work on birds,” says he, “est deux fois plus considerable que mon histoire des quadrupeds.” t And again, “ Je crois que cit ouvrage est superieur à celui des quadru- peds.” { In it he gives an original description of no fewer than 448 species of birds, no less than 200 of which were quite new. His descriptions are characterized by Mr. Swainson as “ not only correct, but masterly :” § whilst at the same time he greatly laments, that from not being referred to the modern genera, or accompanied with plates, their value is much diminished. No one, however, was more aware of this deficiency than Azara himself, who did every thing in his power to lessen the evil. “ From the commencement of my labours,” says he, “ I was quite aware that my notes would be com- paratively of little value, unless they were accom-
* In the French work already referred to, there is an inte- resting abridgement of this treatise on quadrupeds, extending to 140 pages, and enriched with notes by the Baron Cuvier.
++ Voyage, vol. i. p. 384. n t Ib. p. liv. i § Discourse on the Study of Natural History, p. 81.
DON FELIX D AZARA.
panied with exact drawings; but in the district where I wrote, and for 400 leagues round, there was no one near me who was acquainted with the art, and I was therefore compelled to limit my wishes within the bounds of my own unaided exer- tions.” * This want certainly occasions the student much more trouble in identifying the species ; though this, we believe, has very much been done to his hand by Sonnini. In the preface, Azara tells us, that the rapacious birds are to those which are not so, ‘in the proportion of one to nine; while in Europe, according to Buffon, they are as one to fifteen. He adds, “ the French naturalist informs us that in America the birds are not melodious, and this, he ascribes, to the influence of climate. But were we to select the best chorus of songsters we could procure in the old world, and compare it with another chosen in the new, the victory would pro- bably be disputed. From the contest, the nightin- gale, however, must be excluded, for no American bird can compete with her,” ;
As exhibiting a specimen of Azara’s style in this department, we select his account of the flying- toads, Crapands veions, or enyoulevens. “ These birds are allied to the swallows, by their flat head, their neck, and their short feet, as well as by their feeble bill, the nature of their food, their manner of procuring it, and other characters. They differ from them chiefly in being larger, nocturnal, soli- tary, or, at least, less sociable, in resting on the
* Hunter, p. xxiv. - .
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ground, in that they have whiskers, denticulated ears, &c. Their mouth is deformed on account of its great size, being as large and even larger than the head; their beak is small and curved, the tongue straight and peculiar; the whiskers are long and hard, the nostrils pipe-shaped; the eye very large, and across it you see the colour of the open mouth ; the neck is short, and as if swollen, owing to the quantity of feathers which surround it; the legs are short, the feet roundish, strong, and clothed with feathers anteriorly ; the three front claws are united near their origin by a membrane, the remain- ing one is at the side; an indented margin, saw- like, runs along the internal side of the middle claw. They have little flesh in comparison with their bulk ; the stretch from the tip of one wing to that of ano- ther, and the tail, are long; finally, the wing is rather straight, and of a long square shape.
“ Much light dazzles them; and during the day they do not take wing, unless approached very near, when they fly a short space, low and hori- zontally, and fall down suddenly, rolling up their wings like a ball; it is then difficult to discover them, because their plumage resembles the ground, where they rest, close to it, without standing, and as if they were glued to it. It is only during twi- light and full moon they seek their food, flying low and with great ease, frequently changing their direction to catch insects. Some species rest only on the ground, others on trees, and some in both . ways, One species climbs trees vertically, like the
DON FELIX D’AZARA. 67
Carpenters, whilst others, on the contrary, rest only on the tarsus. Some frequent fields, others woods, and some both. These last appear in Paraguay in the middle of winter; the others, only in spring; and some are constantly resident, and during the extreme cold.conceal themselves in the thick woods. It is said they make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, whilst I am certain that some bring forth their young on trees. They all so much resemble each other, that after having seen one, you can never be deceived as to the family to which they belong; and for the same reason, it is very difficult to distinguish the different species. Nor is it easy to discover the habits of nocturnal birds. The size, on many occasions, is a great resource, but then they must be very accurately measured ; the colour of the plumage being of a very common kind, very perplexed and confused, it can scarcely be expressed in words. In short, the examination of these birds is a work of great difficulty, and so very trouble- some, that I have sometimes thrown them alto- gether aside, to avoid the embarrassment of com- paring and describing them.”
With one other extract, from his account of the Small Martin, we fear we must dismiss his very important ornithological labours.—“ I have often observed this bird in the woods of Paraguay; it there always flies above the highest trees; and, if in the plains, it sometimes approaches within thirty or forty feet of the ground, it instantly remounts to its accustomed elevation, so that I have never been
gE a emer e a E ge LA ee e e a rene ey
.
68 MEMOIR OF
able to shoot one. It does not migrate, and is very wild: it does not light either on trees or the ground. It skims along the air like a swallow, and some- times, in passing, catches the spiders on the trees. It is not very unlike the Martin of Spain. It is sometimes called the Bat-swallow, from the resem- blance, both in colour and uncertain flight; at the same time it is more rapid than all the rest. On the wing, it executes every kind of movement, sometimes merely fluttering, then outspreading its wings, now mounting high, and then darting off in a straight line, or obliquely. It threads the branches of trees with the greatest address, and is .so espe- cially destined for flight, that it sometimes does not repose for an instant during the whole day.”
From his zealous and able assistant, Noseda, he obtained the following particulars. “ I have often pursued these birds, and never got a shot at one, not only on account of the rapidity of their flight, but also on account of their great shyness, which prevents them ever coming within gunshot. At the same time, they are very common. Tired of so much useless fatigue, I ordered an Indian to exa- mine if these Martins never perched upon the trees during the hottest part of the day, and also to dis- cover the places where they spent the night. This Indian passed a whole week in the woods, and re- marked that these birds never rested during the day, and that they often soared out of sight. At the same time, he discovered a tree of extraordinary dimensions and very bushy, whence he perceived
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DON FELIX D AZARA. 69
that many Martins sallied forth at break of day. He examined the aperture, and having noticed that a current of air issued from it, he concluded there
must be a second opening, which he discovered near _ the ground. I so placed myself that I could see _ these birds enter their domicile. They arrived at sunset, in small troops (I counted sixty-two), but so rapidly they could scarcely be distinguished. I heard their wings striking against the margin of the entrance, which was so small that they could not enter with extended wing, although the interior was large enough for two to fly abreast. During the night, I closed both openings, and heard the birds flying in the interior. Next morning the tree was cut down, and forty Martins were taken ; the rest escaped. I examined the interior, and found it was fit only for creepers. I put some of them into a cage, and allowed the others to fly about the house. I perceived that they could not stand, and that their crooked nails, very strong and sharp, afforded them every facility for climbing.” — The minute noting of the characters then follows. This must suffice for his great work on Omitho- logy.
And now we should have been happy to have dwelt in the same way on our author's other labours in Natural History, respecting Reptiles, Fishes, and Insects ; and also on his Botanical pursuits, relating both to wild and cultivated plants. These are seve- rally contained in distinct chapters of the French work, and abundantly exhibit both his energy and
70. ; MEMOIR OF
ingenuity. Azara is not to be regarded as an adept in Ichthyology or Entomology, which sciences, when he left Europe, were in a very different state from what they now are. Probably he had never re- ceived a single lesson regarding them, nor had in his possession the most elementary treatise relating to them. Nothing daunted, however, and quite aware of his deficiencies, he determined to allow nothing to escape his scrutiny; and his memoirs on these subjects, more especially the one on the insects of the provinces, extending to seventy pages, and including observations on bees and their products, and wasps and their habits, on the immense colo- nies of ants, on the different kinds of flies, the pests of these countries, on beetles and locusts, and their overwhelming migrations, &c. &c., cannot easily be surpassed either in interest or usefulness. Pre- cisely similar remarks apply to his observations on the Vegetable world. He was a horticulturist and florist rather than a botanist, and very entertain- ingly discourses of whatever was most usefal in these departments ; of trees, shrubs, and grains, in their wildest luxuriance; of the Paraguay tree, so often already mentioned in these pages, which is in these regions what tea is in China, the object of assiduous cultivation and extensive trade; of many medicinal plants; of those which yield caoutchouc ; of cotton, sugar-cane, vines, and tobacco; of coffee and cacao, indigo, and silk ; of maize and mandioc, or cassava, whence tapioca is prepared ; of oils and fruits and culinary vegetables. On these it was our
DON FELIX D'AZARA. 71
intention somewhat to have dilated, but our limits prevent, and we must deny ourselves the gratifica- tion, and our readers, we venture to say, the icin
But curtailed as these details necessarily must be, they are, we believe, amply sufficient to convey an accurate estimate of the patient devotedness with which Azara laboured during so many years, in a way most honourable to himself, for the advance- ment of science, and for the instruction and benefit of mankind. We have mentioned, in a former page, the vexatious circumstances which detained him from the more stirring prosecution of his profession in the civilized world, and chained him to America among the wild beasts of the forest; and to which, however annoying to himself, we owe so much im- portant information, and he, perhaps, his highest celebrity. The delays concerning the settlement of the limits, were not, however, his only ground of vexation. On the other hand, we are from them prepared to expect that those officials who could pursue such a course, in one important affair, were ready for equal malversations in others. We have already stated that one of the subjects which en- gaged Azara’s attention was a review of the history of the provinces, and the several popular accounts which had been published. He was in circum- stances favourable for research, and undertook to examine all the books and manuscripts which were to be found in the country. On ascertaining his pur- pose, the governor of Paraguay put a padlock upon |
SOE LT rT ot flac i. ae
peep E
ea NE =
ole MEMOIR OF
the archives under his keeping, and thus for a time arrested his investigations. Another viceroy ere long succeeded, who was not only ignorant, but also hypocritical and jealous. The civic rulers of Assumption having requested Azara to favour them with an epitome of his researches upon the country, he readily complied. To mark their gratitude, they conferred on him the title of “ The most distin- guished citizen of Assumption.” Upon this the governor was so irritated, that he caused Azara’s history, description, and map to be secretly con- veyed from the city, along with the register in which he was enrolled as a citizen. In spite of all precautions, this disgraceful act became known, and this greatly increased the governor's jealousy and rage. He now wrote to the Spanish government,
that Azara had prepared these documents and maps -
only that he might supply them to their enemies, the Portuguese. In the year 1790, six great boxes, filled with valuables, were sent to the governor, by the Portuguese authorities who were tampering with him, and endeavouring to bring him over to their views. Of this occurrence the high functionary was not slow to avail himself, by representing that the boxes were intended really for Azara. He sent this information to the viceroy of Buenos Ayres, who immediately seized all Azara’s papers and charts, which were never afterwards returned to him. These few statements abundantly prove that the viceroys and governors, far from being anxious to advance Azara’s interest, or to promote his wishes,
sake
DON FELIX D’AZARA. 73
especially as it regarded his return to Europe, on the contrary, did every thing they could to hinder it. All this injustice of his superiors, however, _ diminished not our officer's zeal in the execution of their orders. He was appointed to survey the southern limits of the states, in which government was intending to fix new settlements; and this duty was the more trying, as the region was quite a desert, peopled only by the wild Pampas. At a subsequent period, he received the military command of the frontier next Brazil, with an order to dislodge the Portuguese from the posts which they had there planted. To him also was entrusted the task of examining the harbours of the La Plata, and of regulating a plan of defence against the anticipated attack of the English. He likewise presented to the local government memoirs upon a variety of im- portant subjects, among which we shall particularize only one on the melioration of the administration, and another upon liberating the civilized Indians from their bondage, by altering the absurd govern- ment which had been imposed upon them by the Jesuits. z
Whilst engaged in such honourable employments, for we cannot allude to many others, and with which he never ceased to associate his scientific pursuits, the neglect of the Spanish government at length came toan end, and some attention was manifested to an officer who was at once so devoted and so worthy of reward. In the year 1801, M. Azara obtained the permission he had so long
74 MEMOIR OF
solicited, to return to his native country.* On his arrival in Spain, as already mentioned, he soon began the publication of those works he might un- dertake without the permission of his superiors, and of which we have given some account. Speedily after this he went to Paris, that he might once more have the felicity of meeting his brother, who was then the Spanish ambassador at the court of France. He here divided his time between the enjoyment of his brother's society, and the cultiva- tion of Natural History.- The king of Spain had conferred upon him, in the month of October 1802, the rank of Brigadier-General; but his brother Nicolas, charmed with his personal intercourse, and, on account of his greater age, entertaining for him all a father’s interest, induced him to resign his new commission, that he might always be near himself. But, alas! this tardy enjoyment was short-lived. On the 26th of January 1803, Don Nicolas died ; and Don Felix closed the eyes of a brother he had ever loved, but had scarcely seen. The subsequent events of Azara’s life are very imperfectly known. The king of Spain shortly recalled him, appointing him a member of the Junta de fortificationes y defensa de Ambos- Indias, a board of controul, in which was chiefly centred
* It thus appears that Azara never held the “ office of Go- vernor of Paraguay,” a distinction which has been conferred upon him by the learned author of the Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural History. (See Lardner’s Cyclopedia, vol. lix. p. 81.)
DON FELIX DAZARA. 75
the home government of the Spanish transatlantic possessions. From Spain he continued to correspond with his friend Walckenaer, concerning the publi- cation of his “ Voyages.” In the year 1805 he writes that the government had fixed him in Ma- drid, and that though he had requested a short leave, it could not be granted. The ambition of a hero and tyrant now altered the political relations of France and Spain, and exchanged the friendly and peaceful intercourse of Naturalists and others, for a deluge of misery, rapine, and blood. The last notice we find in the correspondence, in January 1806, is m these striking words: “ A good citizen is his country’s, and I am now useful to mine.” When his works were published in France, a copy could not be transmitted to Madrid; and no further information, we believe, has been procured of his: declining years, or of his death.*
Abused mortals, did you know
Where joy, heart’s ease, and comfort grow, You’d scorn proud towers, And seek them in these bowers ;
* A curious mistake is made in the last edition of the En- cyclopedia Britannica, which, by the bye, contains the only attempt of a notice of Azara’s life we have seen, in any of the popular Biographies or Encyclopedias. He is here confounded with his brother, Don Joseph Nicolas ; and a jumble is made’ of the history of the two into one narrative, and under one name, viz. Don Joseph Felix Nicolas de Azara. Hence Nicolas is made a soldier and naturalist, and Felix an ambassador, virtuoso, and scholar. We need scarcely add, that Don Felix did not die in the year 1803 or 1804.
16 MEMOIR OF
Where winds, perhaps, our woods may sometimes shake, But blustering care can tempest never make,
Nor murmurs e’er come nigh us,
Saving of fountains that glide by us.
Here’s no fantastic masque or dance, But of our kids that frisk and prance ; Nor wars are seen, Unless upon the green Two harmless lambs are butting one another, Which done, both bleating run each to his mother ; And wounds are never found, Save what the ploughshare gives the ground,
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
SUB-GENUS CANIS, OR
THE DOGS, PROPERLY SO CALLED.*.
In the preceding volume we have endeavoured to point out the reasons for considering domestic dogs to'be descended, not solely from a species of wolves or of jackals, but from genuine wild dogs of more
* The most ancient names of the dog are never confounded with the wolf. Cu, Ci, xvwy, Can, Cuen, Khan, Kene, Kao, Quaho, Quio, Qui-loh, Cagot, Coyot, Kot, Cat, belongs to them all: in the Celtic dialects, in the Greek, Latin, Basque, even in the Hottentot and ancient Mexican ; and the last form, Sanscrit, Indee, Chinese, and ancient European names. Dog, Dokke, Dhole, Tulki, Tokla, Toquee, spreads similarly over the whole of Asia, Africa, and Europe: so again in the Greek, énez ; Oriental, Tzebi ; Tartar, Tay f Belgic, Tey, a dog, a bitch ; Techi, in Mexican ; and in the Oriental, Ur ; and in the South Sea Islands, Uri, a dog, one that rises sud- denly. A thorough philological inquiry would most assuredly show, that in no language, and at no period, did man po- sitively confound the wolf, the jackal, or the fox, with a real dog.
73 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
than one homogeneous species. Separate descrip- tions have already shown this result, and enabled us to deny that dog-like wild canines are unques- tionably alienated domestic dogs. That there are races of feral dogs will be shown in the sequel ; but the existence of these animals, and the appear- ances they exhibit, are in themselves reasons for not admitting the general inference, where the indi- cations which should guide us are found wanting. With regard to the probability of the intermixture of the wolf with the dog, the facts are known and admitted; and it may be also assumed, that if a genuine species of the last mentioned should not be parent of any race of dogs, still the crossing often repeated, which, in the earlier states of society, when men and dogs lived more with the wilder species of the creation, must have been much more frequent, and consequently a very considerable pro- portion of the blood of the wolf may be infused in some races, at least of the domestic species; and that proportion, together with other circumstances of climate, food, and education, must have contri- buted to modify their characters and powers.* The same views are applicable to the jackals, and the smaller races of dogs of middle and southern Asia, and again to the Dusicyon group of dogs of South America.
* See Dr. Richardson’s Fauna Boreali-Americana. In his letter to us, he states the American wolves to intermix freely with the dogs, The Prince of Wied is of the same opinion,
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 79
z
It is only upon this principle that we can account for the different number of mammz which domestic dogs are provided with; for physiologists, we ap- prehend, are not justified in assuming the difference in organs of such importance to arise from domesti- city, food, or climate: no other domestic animal is thus found altered by these circumstances; and even in the sow, should they be found to differ, it
termixed. Now, of domestic dogs; “Mr. Dauben- ion éxamined twenty-one individuals of both sexes, and found eight who had five on each side, making ten; eight with four on each side, making eight ; two with five on one side and four on the other, making nine; and three with four on one, and — three on the other, giving seven. We have seen
already, that the maximum of mammz in the | canines is ten, and the minimum six; that in all the wild species the number is always in pairs, and that they never vary in a species. To what other® cause, then, can we ascribe the anomaly in domes- tic dogs so justly as to an intermixture of species mG i Nations, at first, reclaiming the best disposed canines of their own woods, and after a gradual demorali- zation by servitude, in animals by nature prurient, succeeding in making cross breeds with the do- mestic species of other tribes, derived from other regions. This opinion is strengthened by the fact, that the attractions to form a cross breed with wilder animals, have always originated with the domestic races. We may regret the celebrated
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80 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
physiologist did not give the names of the breeds of dogs, along with the number of mamma ; for it is likely that the most anomalous would have shown also the greatest degree of degradation in the crossings. Some inferences might likewise be drawn from a multiplied series of observations on the colour of the eyes; for in the wild, and semi- wild dogs, they are constantly uniform. Even the quality and colours of the hair is not without some importance ; for although both albinism and mela- nism are existing effects in the wild state, among many species of mammiferæ, they scarcely affect _a
Notwithstanding that domesti-
| aTe even in the very first offspring, is liable to
show a commencement of.change of colour, it does not, in the main, take away the original tinctures from the greater number so produced; and when the disturbing cause is removed, and the animals are allowed to resume their aboriginal state, the primitive livery returns. We may conclude, also, that the feral races of long standing are of similar colours with the types from which they are sup- posed to have sprung, both in Asia and America, and that they clearly point to species of aboriginal dogs, not to be grouped with either wolves or foxes. The colour of the palate in several races of dogs being black, while in others it is whitish, may de- serve consideration, for we observed the black to — prevail in the wild and semi-domesticated species of South America; and it has since been found to
be the case with the breeds of Patagonia and Tierra
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 8l
del Fuego,” it is likely that the latter have often a fifth toe on the hind feet, as well as the former, who are mostly provided with it. In these respects, the races of South America assimilate with the old ‘terriers of Europe, as they do also in several other particulars.
Having already adverted to the skulls of canines in general, we shall defer further notice until we describe the structure of the primitive races.
There is no typical colour of the hair assignab.e to dogs; though, perhaps, a kind of fulvous buff is the most frequent, in all the regions of moderate and fervid temperatures. And it may be observed, that the author of the British Field Sports has justly remarked, that all the great and ancient races of dogs are originally divided into a rough and smooth variety, which appear to be independent of climate ; for both are found to continue under opposite cir- cumstances.
No domestic dog is provided with a tail that reaches to the ground, or forms a real brush, like that of foxes; the organ is not so flexible as in the last mentioned, but rigid, and mostly drawn up into a curve, with the point towards the back. In joy, it wags from side to side; in fear, it is with- drawn between the legs. The ears of dogs are originally upright and pointed, in all the races having long hair and a sharp muzzle; in those ` where the head is similarly terminated, but the hair is short, they are half erect; in the blunt-
* Communicated in a letter by Captain Fitzroy, R. N.
VOL. II. F
Airai o x oe O e A
oe INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
headed, they hang down. ‘The eyes of all are more horizontal than in the wild species; they are seated somewhat nearer together, are comparatively larger, of light brown, black, and sometimes of | light blue colours. Dogs stand more perpendicu-. larly upon the toes than wolves ; the croup is equal, or even higher, than the shoulders. But it is in their intellectual powers that they are chiefly and eminently distinguished from their congeners, powers rooted in their original constitution, unat- tainable by those that have remained wild, and only in part developed by education and circumstances ; modified, or even deteriorated, by crosses with the irreclaimable species.
Of all carnivorous quadrupeds, they possess the greatest variety of modulations in their voice: they bark, bay, howl, yelp, whine, cry, growl, and snarl, according to the emotions they feel. When en- couraging each other in hunting, expressing the language of authority; in watchfulness, at distant noises, or displeasure at particular sounds; in pain or suffering, they have an expressive moan; a gut- tural tremulous squeal, under impatience ; a snarl, in anger; and a kind of shriek, when their passions are excited to ferocity. Who is there so little ob- servant as not to know, almost by the sound of the first note, the peculiar bark of the drover and shep- herd’s. dog, half intonated, as the expression of delegated authority, and understood by the flock or the drove, the more earnest repetition when the first signal is disregarded, followed by the low and
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 83
bluff sound, conveying a menace, and at length the sharp snarl, when he finds it necessary to enforce obedience, by running to the spot, and execute his orders with well counterfeited anger; or, if disap- pointed, the half howling bay of lamentation at the failure? All these emotions are expressed in a language which marks the singular endowments bestowed by the Creator's fiat, for purposes that cannot well be mistaken, nor be studied, without calling upon our sympathy and affection. Dogs, likewise, express most significantly, by the voice, their desire to be admitted within doors, and, still more, in begging with perseverance ; or in resent- ment, when treated with contempt. They are jea- lous of the master’s favour, quick in discovering the respectable, insolent to the poor, selfish in gor- mandizing, tyrannical among their meaner inferiors, and fawning upon their superiors; injury they resent, with the discretion and pertinacity of poli- ticians.
Tilesius relates of his own dog, a fact, which he witnessed :—The animal had been worried by ano- ther of greater strength; when returned to his home, it was observed that he abstained from half the proportion of his allotted food, and formed a kind of store with his savings. After some days he went out, brought several dogs of the vicinity back, and feasted them upon his hoard. ‘This sin- gular proceeding attracted the authors attention, who, watching the result, observed that they all went out together; and, following them, he found
ee of
84 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
they proceeded, by several streets, to the skirts of the town, where the leader singled out a large dog, which was immediately assailed by all his guests, and very severely punished.
A similar case is reported to have happened some years ago, in the precincts of London, where a person on business from Devonport (then named Dock) had taken his dog. This animal being mal- treated by a watch-dog, returned, with his master, home; but he was missed a day or two after, as well as a favourite companion of his, a very large house-dog, and neither were seen for about ten days. They had scarcely returned before a letter arrived, informing the owner of the dog, that that animal, in company with another, had been seen at the place where he had been maltreated, and that they had killed the dog who gave the first offence.
The sagacity of some races is no less remarkable: as, for instance, that of a dog who had delayed en- tering the ferry-boat at Saltash, near Devonport, and, swimming after it, found that the tide swept him away ; instead of persevering, he swam back, and, running along the shore to some distance up the current, plunged in again, and reached the landing place on the opposite side. Dr. J. Maccul- loch relates, of his own knowledge, several singular anecdotes of a Scottish shepherd-dog, who always eluded the intentions of the household respecting him, if aught was whispered in his presence that did not coincide with his wishes.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 85
Their instinctive comprehension of the nature of property, is evinced in the case of a lady at Bath walking out, and finding her progress impeded by a Strange mastiff-dog, until, half alarmed, she dis- covered the loss of her veil; when, retracing her steps, the dog went on before her, till the article lost was discovered ; and then the animal hastened after his own master. Again, when a lad, upon a hard trotting horse, allowed the cakes he had bought to be tossed out of his basket; and he had scarcely discovered his loss on dismounting, when the house- dog, who had followed him, came home with the. greater part in his.mouth: these he had no sooner dropped, than, running back, he fetched the re- mainder.
But their capacity of ee ee certain wishes of man, is still more curiously evinced in the Pariah dogs, belonging to the Sepoy soldiers in India. As these men are of many different creeds, sects, and castes, scarcely any two can cook together, or use the same vessels; they are even jealous of a defiling shadow passing across their food. -But their duties not permitting personal superintendence, many have dogs so trained, as to keep off all strangers: these animals will stand on their hind feet, and, springing in the air, drive away an argeelah, or a stooping vulture; being ever careful that their own shadow does not cross the vessels.
Their benevolent feelings, and prescience of im- pending consequences, we have personally witnessed in a water-dog, who, unbidden, plunged in the
EL eR A eee Tamea aaee e seme cee cee aa
eo * 5 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
current of a roaring sluice to save a small cur, mali- ciously flung in. And, in another instance, of a Pomeranian dog, we have often seen, belonging to the master of a Dutch Bylander vessel: this crea- ture sprang overboard, caught a child up and swam on shoré with it, before any person had discovered the accident. The most remarkable of these is, however, that of a Swiss Chamois hunter's dog, who, being on the glaciers with an English gentle- man and his master, observed the first approaching one of those awful crevices in the ice to look down into it, he began to slide towards the edge; his guide, with a view to save him, caught his coat, and both slid onward, till the dog seized his mas- ters clothes, and arrested them both from inevita- ble death. The gentleman left the dog a pension for life.
A more remarkable presentiment of danger affect- ing themselves, appears in the notice Captain Fitz- roy gives of the earthquake at Galcahuasco, on the 20th February, 1835, where it appeared .that all the dogs had left the town before the great shock which ruined the buildings was felt; and, it seems, that the same instinct was manifested at Con- cepcion.* saii
But, in constant fidelity, the dog offers the highest models for our admiration and gratitude ; numberless are the cases where they have been found on fields of battle, lying by, and watching the bodies of their slain masters. In 1660, S.
* Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.
ee
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 87
Bochart relates a case, then still witnessed at Paris, by all who chose, of a dog who had followed his master's bier to the grave three years before, and was then remaining on the spot.* A similar case occurred in the last half century, at Lisle, where the admiration of the neighbourhood caused a hut to be built for the dog, upon the grave of his master, and food to be brought him. The faithful creature resided on the spot for nine years, when he died. Recently, the public authorities in France having made strenuous endeavours to abate smuggling be- tween the frontiers of Belgium and that kingdom, discovered that they had only transferred the prac- tice from men to dogs, who were trained to carry Jace, and other small articles, securely packed, across fields and rivers, where a whole army of custom-house, or other officers, were inadequate to arrest them.
Dogs have propensities to act upon excitements which would seem to be foreign to their nature, - though we know that musical sounds offend them, yet to have so strong a predilection for harmony, as is described to have been the case with a dog at Paris, is very remarkable; for this animal, who was known, in'the beginning of the Revolution, to - musicians, by the name of Parade, because he regu-
_larly attended the military at the Thuileries, stood
* Hierosoicon. A later account attests his continuation in the Church-yard of St. Innocent, to the end of his life. See also the affecting anecdote given in Bell’s British Quadrupeds, page 223.
88 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
_ by, and marched with the band; and, at night, went to the Opera, Comedie Italienne, or Theatre Feydau ; dined with any musician who expressed, by a word or gesture, that his company was asked ; yet always withdrew from attempts to be made the property of any individual.* - There is a still more singular instance of the desire of excitement in the dog, who, for several seasons, was known, in Lon- don, to be always present and conspicuous whenever there was a fire; yet was not owned by any person belonging to the fire-companies.
But the most amusing, is the case communicated to the French Academy of Sciences by the cele- . brated Leibnitz, referring to a dog who had been taught to modulate his voice, so as as to be able to repeat intelligibly the words. required to ask for coffee. tea, and chocolate.
The numberless anecdotes that might 1 be collected on these subjects would fill volumes, and attest the credibility of at least a great number. But to pro- ` ceed.
Dogs are prone to dream; and then they may be observed to move their feet, make efforts to bark, agitate themselves as if they were hunting, or be- come excited till the hair rises on their flanks, and the skin becomes clammy; yet, when awake, they. scarcely ever Sweat, but cool themselves by panting, and hanging out the tongue. They discover, with great readiness, in strange persons, the tokens of fondness for their species, by what a classical friend-
* Peltier. Paris pendant l’annee 1798.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. - 89
calls, a freemasonry between them. Yet activity js perception, and lively instinct, is occasionally found , quite wanting. Thus, of two dogs who had fol- lowed their masters, in a burning sun, along the sands of the French coast, on the Mediterranean, when they stopped to rest, one immediately dug with his feet a hole, sufficient to shelter and cool him, while the other stood whining in distress,| without even the intelligence to imitate his compa-), nion. Another instance of stupid indifference is! related to have been witnessed by Sir Robert Heron, who was followed home from the assizes by a strange dog. The animal stayed at his house, without the least concern, until the Baronet returned to the same county town, when he found the dog was the , property of a brother magistrate, and had followed \ the first mentioned, to all appearance, only because \, he, as well as the other, rode chestnut ponies.
‘In the account of the dogs of Patagonia, we shall see the extraordinary value savages set upon pos- sessing them; and we may thence infer their im- portanee, in the earlier eras of the world, to those tribes that first succeeded in domesticating them. They were the surgeons of the savage, licking the wounds he had received in his frequent encounters with fellow men, or wild beasts; and guarding his weapons and his couch. The interest thus excited, soon caused the figure of a dog to become typical of abstract ideas. His image became the universal designation of fidelity ; his coercive instinct, that of the two hemispheres, for so the Egyptians typified
era erceencee
90 ` ` INTRODUCTOEY REMARKS.
them on each side of the hawk in their processions ; and explained the meaning to be, that these com- pelled the sun (the hawk) to keep his course with- in the zodiac. In the surgical capacity, they were represented by the embalming priests, who wore masks of black dogs’ heads before their faces. In _ that of watching, the dog was Anubis,* Sothis, As- . trocyon, Ailurus or Sirius, the dog-star; the riser whose appearance warned the public of the approach- ing inundation of the Nile. In the character of nurse, Theba (the bitch) was the ark, the presery- ing and renovating asylum of man. This doctrine spread through all the systems of initiation, classi- cal as well as barbarian, as far as the British Druids, whose canine denomination is mentioned in a for- mer page. The Egyptians also testified their fear and abhorrence of the Scythic, or shepherd con- querors, after their expulsion, by sacrificing to Typhon (Tatphune), red-haired men, oxen, and red dogs. The Greeks, who were more attracted by the poetry, than by the abstract meanings of their own or their neighbours’ religious emblems, after placing Cerberus to watch the gates of their infernal regions, notice them mostly in hunting
* Anubis was also the personification of human science (from Anub, gold?) He was gilded in his character of Thot ; but as Hermanubis or Mercury, conductor of the dead, he was painted black, and hence his image was occasionally made half yellow and half black. See Jablonski Anubis, and Creut- . zer Rel. de PAntiquité. His statue was distinguished by an amiculus thrown over the back. ,
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 9}
scenes, and in the fabulous or actual deaths of heroes and real personages, by the agency of dogs: though even here they are probably mere types, in- cluding the fate of Actæon, and of Eschylus, torn to pieces by Esterices, not terriers, as Dr. Clark seems to believe, nor house-dogs, but massacred by en- _ vious courtiers, on account of the honours paid him by King Attalus. The Romans, also, had their legends and ceremonies, in which dogs bore a con- Spicuous part. The image of a dog was placed in the vestibulum of their houses to guard the Penates. In commemoration of their delivery from destruc- tion, and in punishment of the apathy the Capito- line watch-dogs were guilty of, on the night when the Senonic Gauls would have escaladed this last stronghold of the republic, and geese alone were watchful, they had annually a ceremony, wherein a dog was crucified upon an elder-tree (Sambucus nigra), between the temples of Sumanus and In- ventus; and all dogs seen about the streets were then flogged, for the neglect of their progenitors. In the fire-worship | initiation of the Zenda Vesta, he, the dog that repels darkness and his agents, is pourtrayed with the eyes and eyebrows yellow, and the ears white and yellow. The animal is still an object of solicitude with all Parsees at Bombay. Food is, by them, given to all dogs promiscuously ; and so incumbered was the city by their numbers, that the government, not without serious opposi- tion, was lately compelled to abate the nuisance, by causing great numbers to be enticed on board boats,
92, . INTRODUCTORY REMARKS..
which, putting to sea, means were found to destroy them.
The ancient Chaones, Lychaones, and, perhaps, the Sacæ,* seem to have taken their name from dogs; and probably they bore these animals, or their skins, for banners. The Menapii had a dog in their shields ; and the Tertio Decimanni (according to the provincial canon from Constantine to Theodosius), had the same emblem, painted yellow upon a white ground. In the Notitia Imperii, no less than ten legions bore the effigies of dogs upon their shields.
Among the Ptoembarii of Ethiopia, a living dog
was kept and worshipped as an inspired king,t whose voice and actions were interpreted by priests ! The root Can, Khan; in its acceptation of power, is evidently mixed up with the idea of a dog. We find the Psalmist typifying, by the name of dogs, hostile kings around him ; and the prophets making use of the term head, or chief dog. The word Keleb, only marks that it is a foreign image trans- lated into the language of the Hebrews. Many nations in central Asia, and tribes that emigrated from thence, employed the large ferocious dogs they had with them for the purposes of war. Some- times forming their advancad, or first line, with
* Sacee, Saha, Sahia, of India ; Sak, ancient Persic, a dog ; Gsach, Teutonic, power ; Chach, a king. The Median Sraze, a dog, is only a mutation of Sak,
+ Pliny, Solinus, Plutarch, &e. Even in Britain, Cu, a dog or a head, was thus dignified, as in Cunobelin: the head king, the solar king, dog of the sun, the pendragon.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 93
light troops, and these animals; at others, each war- rior having his own dog to assist him ; and, lastly, placing the dogs to guard their women and waggon- camps. We find this usage among the Hircanians, - Caspians, Colophoni, Castabanentes, the Gauls, the tribes on the Meander, and the Garamantes of the African Zaara.* The oldest Germanic tribes like- wise used dogs; and the Cymbers, when they were — defeated by Marius, left the glory of a long and ob- stinate resistance to the Roman legions in the hands of their women, and the valour of their dogs, who formed the defensive force of the Wwaggon-rampart that inclosed their camp. The practice of using watch-dogs to guard fortresses and castles, continued until the introduction of regular armies. The town of St. Malo, in France, for several centuries, was guarded by a few watchmen, and many dogs kept at the public expense, who were unchained as soon as the gates were locked. The Rhodian knights trained theirs with particular care for this service ; during the invasion of Peru by the Spaniards, the names of two dogs are recorded, who received regu- lar soldiers rations.
But it was for the purposes of watching the flocks and hunting, that dogs were most universally trained from the earliest ages, and that pains began to be taken to improve their required qualities, by cross-
*. See Pliny, Valerius Flaccus, and others. +; They were named Leoncillo and Vezerillo, Lopez, His- tory of Peru,
|
4
94 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
ing the breeds of different countries. The Cyne- | getica of the younger Xenophon, Gratius Faliscus, Aurelius Nemesianus, Oppian and lian, contain many particulars on the questions connected with this subject. We learn from them, that although the Greeks had many denominations of races of dogs, the distinct varieties in their possession were not numerous; and, that while their instinctive qua- lities were as perfect as now, they had not yet acquired that complete docility which incessant training and education has since produced.
In .a series of sixteen or seventeen breeds of hunting-dogs then existing in Western Asia, Greece, Italy, and to the north of Macedonia, there appears
| to have been only two races; one of greyhounds,
the other of a kind of dogs hunting by the scent.
‘Most of these were named after the nations where
they were bred; but others, particularly in Greece, were subdivided under appellations of their sup- posed original owners, or frem qualities for which they were celebrated. Thus, the Iberian, Gallican, and Carian, were Asiatic; the Thracian, Sauroma- tan, Thessalian, and Pæonian, were extra Grecian ; the Ausonian, Arcadian, Laconian, Locrian, and Cretan, were Greek. Among the last mentioned, were the breeds called Castorian, Menelaides, and Hermodian, named after the heroes who were sup- posed to have reared them. The Cypceli, or dogs without feet, bred in Achaia, were most likely very fleet greyhounds. The Spartan, or Laconian, asserted to be a cross breed derived from foxes, or
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. ` 95
more likely from our Chrysean group, hunted ‘by
the scent. The Chaonian, no doubt, had also a
mixed origin, or were a domesticated race of Cha-
ontes, or Chrysean wild dogs, allied to the Molos-
sian, which race was a broad-mouthed breed, and
therefore connected with the drover, or watch-dog,
but not with the bull-dog or mastiff ; for that kind
was unknown, until the march of Alexander made
Greece acquainted with it. The Chaonian is most
likely still to be seen in the great watch-dogs of - Epirus, and even in the race of Asia Minor; and,
as it is mentioned also among the Cretan, whére
the Molossian were fabled to have been cast in brass
by Vulcan, and animated by Jupiter, we may con- - clude, that it was imported during the swarming of the Cyclopian, and other nations, after they were
expelled Albanian Iberia and High Asia, and were
wandering, for some centuries, along the seas in
quest of plunder and new homes. Of this race
were also, no doubt, the Cretan Diaphonoi, who
fought by day and hunted by night. But the
Parippi seem to have been small, and carried on
horses, as was afterwards done, in the romantic era
of Western Europe, by knights and damsels with
their brachets.*
Celius and others advert, however, to a race of blue, or slate-coloured Molossi (Glauci Molossi), not highly esteemed by the sportsmen of antiquity ; which, nevertheless, we are inclined to consider as
* Others, however, imagine that the Parippi were dogs, in fleetness, equal to a horse’s speed. i
i Na coals a A" phn ta SRI AE BBS Tt T
96- INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
the sources of the French Matin, so unphilosophi- cally represented by Buffon as one of the great pro- genitor breeds of dogs, though it is only an inferior descendant of what is now called the great Danish dog, or, more properly, the great house-dog of the northern German nations. This race was anciently of an iron-blue colour, and approached, in the form of the mouth, the present Suliot dogs. The Mo- lossi, unlike bull-dogs, who seldom, if ever, give
tongue, were prone to barking.
domus simul alta Molosses personuit canibus. LUCRETIUS.
Virgil styles the race Acer Molossus. Nimesianus speaks of rural Molossi. The present breed of the Morea still retains its ancient characters, and is not
_of mastiff form. It was when the Greeks became
acquainted with the true mastiff that they, accord- ing to their constant practice, referred to some race of their own, a different kind of dogs, but which the gods, having created every thing in Greece, ne- cessarily proceeded from thence; and the Romans, servile copiers of Greek ideas, applied the same name of Molossian to the British bull-dog, when
they became acquainted with it.*
The Arcadian dogs, Leonicit leontomiges, said to be sprung from lions, show an approach to mastiffs, only that they were not with drooping ears; for Megasthenes, being, we believe, the most ancient
* Yet Gratius makes the distinction, when he admits the inferiority of the Molossian to the British. Cynegeticon, 175.
. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 97
writer who notices that peculiarity, would scarcely have mentioned it as such in Persia, if it had been known among any breed of dogs in Greece.
The Alopecides of Sparta seem not to have been valued, when, according to Xenophon, who com- pares them with the Castorides, they were under- sized, and, consequntly, wanting in audacity and perseverance ; their principal use was in securing small game. Yet, according to Nicander, the Cas- torides were dun-coloured dogs, of a similar vulpine origin as the Alopecides of Laconia and Amorgia. , Amyclea, where they were bred, being a town of | Laconia, and the birth-place of Castor and Pollux. . Festus calls them, “ Sagaces canes ex vulpe et. cane.” But as crossing breeds was constantly prac- i tised, the Spartan, on other occasions, are highly’ praised ; and then, no doubt, were fit to grapple with the larger animals of the chase. These, pro- bably, were the Castorides of Xenophon.
Among the breeds of dogs known to the classical writers of antiquity, by report more than by per- sonal information, was that styled Elymean. It seems to have belonged to the Elymei, a tribe of the deserts bordering on Bactria and Hircania, but to have extended as far as Egypt; for it is depicted on the monuments of Thebes. Cirino, and the commentator on Fracastors Alcon, show the pro- bability, that from this name arose the modern appellation of Lyemer, in French, Limier, applied to the blood-hound, because it was formerly used to track game, such as wild boar, &c., through the
ae G
98 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,
forest, until the huntsman, who held it by a length- ened lyemme, or leash, came upon the lair of the animal.* It is, however, likely, that the Limmer is meant, for the two races are confounded; and the last mentioned was the most common.
Of the Indici, or Indian dogs, by Aristotle re- ported to be a hybrid race between the dog and tiger, we may conjecture, as this intermixture is physiologically inadmissible, that the Greek philo- sopher trusted reports conveyed to him from the east, and originating either in the love of the mar- vellous, which oriental nations constantly betray, or in the misapprehension of terms used in the descrip- tion of the spotted, or brindled parent animal, by the Greeks understood to be a tiger or a panther ; when the words of the natives, which conveyed this idea, may have confounded the hunting-leopard with a brindled canine of the woods, such as the Lyciscus tigris, we have already noticed; or a spe- cies of Lycaon (Canis pictus), of central Asia, now lost by absorption in the mastiff race; or in a broad-mouthed spotted, or brindled dog, nearly allied to it, then called the Lybian Matagonian, and formerly also about the temples of Ceylon; t for
* Jt is also written Limer, when the blood-hound is in- tended ; and Limmer anciently signified another kind,—the mongrel between a hound and a greyhound ; this was let slip to pursue the game at sight, and retrieve it by the nose when lost ; but the blood-hound was not slipped, he led the hunts- _ man in silence. € ++ Indi coitus tempore in Saltibus canes fæminas reliqunt ut
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 99
this was likewise pretended to be a crossed race with a wild beast. Several other races of dogs are mentioned by the Greek classical writers of anti- quity ; but we know little more of them than their names, and with what breeds it was recommended to cross them: But the cattle, and shepherd-dogs, equally valuable in hunting and in watching flocks, are described as by far the largest and most useful. In this race was intermixed the blood of the Chaon, already noticed. “‘ Chaonides a Chao luporum ge- nere non nulli existément.”—Ceelius.* They were of the same kind as the Epirotic Molossi, and most likely the progenitors of the subsequent western boar-hounds.
The Romans, during their extended empire, added
cum his tigrides coeant: quarum ex primes conceptibus ob ni- miam feritatem, inutilis partus judicant ; itidem secundos: sed tertios educart.—Solinus, Polyhistor, Pliny, Strabo.
Non canis sed tigris procreatus, et secundo ex hoc et cane etiamnumtigris, qui vero deniceps et hoc et cane concipitur canis est seminis, in deterius degeneratur neque hoc negaverit Aristotelés.— Elian, lib. 8.
There may be truth in the mode of breeding from an hybrid race as above indicated, and that the infusion of strange blood required softening down for two generations, without ex- tinguishing the vigour the cross had produced ; for, of the | fourth generation of a cross with the wolf, the French king’s /| chief hunstman reported to Buffon, that having tried one in a boar chase, he was killed, by venturing, in the first encounter, to grapple with his quarry directly in front.
* From this root we may also derive the Roman proper
100 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
several races of dogs to the Greek catalogue. They notice the Celtic breed, which was regarded as descended from wolves.*
The Spanish Iberian is equivocally praised by Nemesianus. “ Nec quorum proles de sanguine manat origo.” It.is thence, however, we have ob- tained dogs of a very fine scent; and Oppian like- wise mentions the IBEPEZ; but the question remains, Whether Asiatic Iberia is not meant by both? It was from that vicinity that they obtained their Phasiania, supposed to be used in fowling. The Petronian, so called on account of their hard feet, were a breed introduced from the Sicambri, beyond the Rhine, and also believed to have been adapted to the same purpose ; but the Althamanian, from the vicinity of Pindus, in Macedonia, are only praised for a circumventing sagacity, as men- tioned by Gratius Faliscus. “ Comparat his ver- suta suas Athamania fraudes.”
In Italy Proper, the Etruscan and Umbrian breeds alone seem to have been valued; the first, according to Nemesianus, was a shaggy harrier, and may have been introduced from Spain by the Iberian colony which forced its way into Liguria. The se- cond, a dog nearly allied to our later blood-hound,
names of Cato and Catullus, through the Sabine Catu, the most ancient Italian name for a dog.
* “ Hoe idem e lupis Galli, quorum greges suum cuisque ductorum e canibus Lyciscam habuit.”—Pliny. But Strabo thinks they came from Britain. See Alcon. p. 17.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 101
since it was held by a limme, or thong, and, guided by the nose, led the hunter on to the game
Sic cum feras vestigat, et longo sagax Loro tenetur umber, ac presso vias Scrutatur ore, dum procullente suem Odore sentit ; paret & tacito locum Rostro per errat, &c.
SENECA IN THYESTE.
In Persia, where the ruling dynasties were in general descended from conquering tribes of central Asia, and the princes possessed vast hunting packs, as is attested by Xenophon, we find Megasthenes first noticing true mastiffs with drooping ears ; these were most likely known among the Greeks by the name of Candarides and Seri.* The East had also, as we have seen, powerful cattle-dogs and true greyhounds. A race of this kind is likewise re- presented in the hunting scenes depicted in the catacombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs, attesting the remote antiquity of the breed; and we find them again in the Persian sculptures at Takhti Boustan, which belong to the Parthian era. But with regard to lapdogs, none are noticed in Asia, nor does it appear they attracted much attention among the
* The Seri were not the Chinese, but the inhabitants of the present Afghanistan, where the mulberry is a principal article of food, consequently, where the silk-worm was reared, and certainly the country whence the silk trade of Eurape ob- tained the supply of that article. Candahar is the same country, or a province of },
102. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Greeks; though, at a later period, the Roman ladies were very partial to the Melitean, or Maltese breed.
Thus we find the early Greeks acquainted, at first, with only two races of foreign origin, clearly made out; the greyhound, and a shepherd, or rather drover’s dog, which answered also for hunting and watching property. They had, besides, one or two of indigenous derivation, which were inter- mixed with those hunting by scent, and believed to be of Vulpine extraction. Ata later period the “true mastiffs became known,‘ and the lapdog of Malta was imported. In proof, that neither they nor the Romans had any notion.of such packs of — hounds as we have at present, we have only to refer to Ovid’s description of the death of Actzon, to be satisfied, that his hounds (no doubt the pic- ture of a complete set in the age of Augustus) Were, nevertheless, a mixture of dogs, with very different qualities and characters in scent, sight, velocity, voice, size, colours, and nature of hair, &c. Tn- deed, the mixture of matches of hounds, greyhounds, bull-dogs, and watch-dogs, was still usual on the continent, until the beginning of the last century, whenever a great hunting expedition was under- taken; and, in Turkey, the grandees, even at the present time, collect the watch-dogs, &c. of the shepherd tribes of all nations within their reach, and unite them with their own greyhounds, when an important day’s sport is expected.
The ancients were admirers of breeds of dogs of
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 103
certain colours. White or blue (slate colour) hunt- Ing-dogs were not esteemed ; they preferred such as had the fur of a wolf, or were buff (grain colour) foxy, brindled like the tiger, or spotted like the panther. Xenophon approves of those with colours ‘Separately marked; and Pollux objects to much white, black, or red. . Those which were tan- coloured, and had a black muzzle, were named Pholyes, and highly esteemed.* The dogs hunting by scent are, however, always represented as having a vulpine character; and, therefore, they cannot hars belonged to the race of our modern hounds. Niphus is the first, who, we think, applies impro- perly to them the name of Brachas, a British Celtic appellation ; which, according to Mr. Whitaker, at first designated a wild hound.t In the view of that writer, there were originally in Britain five races of dogs; the great household-dog, the greyhound, the bull-dog, the terrier, and the large slow-hound. But, in his description, he evidently confounds races; for the great household-dog is, with him, a mastiff, having no sagacity of nose, and distinct from the bull-dog, to which he attributes powers of scent. The greyhound is regarded by him as the Vertagus, or British Ver. trach; while Caius and Pennant are more inclined to consider it a kind of lurcher. His fourth race, is the terrier of Britain, considered as distinct from the crooked-legged turn-
* Pholyes fulvi dieuntur canes ore nigricante. Ceelins, + History of Manchester, b, ix. sect. vi, p. 66.
104 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
spit of the continent, noticed even by Greek writers. This may be an indigenous species ; because Oppian,
= under the name of Agasseus, clearly describes the
} Seottish, or rough-haired breed. And his denomi- į nation seems to be derived from the Celtic Aghast,
or Agass, a word used to designate simply a dog; therefore, emphatically, the dog of the country. Caius, however, employed the name Agasæus for the gazehound; which may be our present grey- hound, hunting entirely by the eye. The fifth, is the southern, also Lancashire, or Manchester hound ; but that species is of the same original stock with the beagle, which Pennant is inclined to consider as the Agasseus; and we may believe, if it was known in Britain at a remote period, bore the Celtic name of Brach, probably derived from Brac, a spot; in the Teutonic dialects, Brach, hiatus, interruptio, macula.
It is, however, obvious, that all ified of hounds
with round and long drooping ears are originally
descended from one race, if not from a distinct spe- cies of dog allied to the Lycaon, and derived from the East. In the researches made, with a view to trace their origin, a great number of antique sculp- tures, statues, bas reliefs, and intaglios, were con- sulted, as well as the illuminated manuscripts in public and private libraries, of a considerable part of Europe ; several collections of ancient seals; nu- merous drawings of monumental effigies, and of
4 stained glass, and the result proved, that with the
exception of one Egyptian instance, no sculpture of O S i
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, - 105
the earlier Grecian era produced representations of hounds with completely drooping ears; those with them half pendulous are missing in the most an- cient; and this character increases, by degrees, in the works of the Roman period.// There is, in the Vatican collection, only one statue of a genuine mastiff; and representations of a kind of hound with a small ear, partially turned downwards, occur in a statue of Meleagar, and in other instances ; but, we think, in none so early as the Periclean age. Of those of Imperial Rome, one also repre- sents the Tuscan dog; the others are British, Spa- nish, or a Gallic hound, not noticed by Pliny.* Strabo first describes, we think, the British bull- dog ; remarking the pendulous ears, frowning aspect, and relaxed lips. And lian, Diodorus, and Co- lumella, mention dogs with procumbent and dejected | ears.t Notices of these characters, in writers of so |! late a period, indicate an absence of the same cha-\, racters in the indigenous races of classic ground, ||
and their novelty, at the time these authors were |
}
writing. The sculptures of Takhti Boustan, in“
* We may point out those in the bas reliefs of Nehalennia, though we think they represent beagles, not correetly copied in the engraved representations of that divinity ; a lamp sur- mounted by a true hound, very late Roman ; a Diana in Beyer ; hound, also very late pagan Roman ; a monumental relief of Martia Euthodia, a Romanized lady, with a dog, whose ears are cropped ; the Actæon statue in the British Museum is grouped with wolf-like dogs, but the ears are restorations.
++ Dejectis ac procumbentibus auribus.
.106 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,
Persia, attest, as far as they go, similarly a want of the drooping ears in dogs; and the Indian carvings, paintings, and manuscripts, are equally destitute of hounds and mastiffs, excepting in the decorations of the Budha temples of Ceylon, where an incar- nation of the god Mattalee, in the form of a fierce dog, occurs; and another, where Jutaka is attacked by a hunter with his dog. In both representations the animals resemble a Lycaon (Canis pictus, or an Hyena crocuta); in the distribution of. colours and spots only, the hunter’s dog is smaller, with the ears pointed ; and the incarnate god is larger, and has them rounded, though erect. In the middle ages, the northern invaders of the Roman empire brought with them their own fierce races of rugged and huge coursing and cattle dogs, whose descen- dants may still be traced in Russia, Scotland, Ire- land, Spain, and even America. From the time of the Goths, hounds, before not common, seem to disappear altogether for some ages. The bronze animal of the time of Charlemagne, at Aix-la~Cha- pelle, is not clearly a dog. The oldest, therefore, we have found, is the embellishment of a seal, where two dogs, with dropped ears, we take to be brachet- hounds, are figured beneath a horseman blowing a horn. It is the image of Errard of Orange, about the year 1174; the family arms of that house being originally a hunting-horn. The next is on the seal | of Alberic de Vere, 1214; and the third, a stained ™ \ glass of Ferdinand, King of Castile, 1230; after eae they become gradually more common.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 107
Hence, we may perhaps conclude, greyhounds with erect ears, being painted in the catacombs of the kings of Thebes, in Egypt, above 3,000 years | ago, and sculptured in Greece, with them half de- | flected, not earlier than the era of Pericles, that these animals, the oldest race trained for hunting, © were marked with this sign of domesticity about his period, or near one thousand years after the date of the first known pictures, or that the Egyp- tian were distinct from those of Europe. Again, - hounds, and broad-mouthed dogs with pendulous ears, not being known till the era of Alexander, and continuing scarce to a comparatively late period, that they belong to a distinct origin; were reduced to domesticity at a subsequent time; or were re- claimed in a region very remote from the then ex- isting seat of civilization. Finally, that with them also the pendulous mark of domestication was a gradual result effected somewhat later.
Yet the single exception we have noticed is suffi- { | cient to establish the fact, that dogs with pendulous |
ears existed at a very remote period; for the figure
is found in the scenes relating to the chase published | by Cailland, and taken (we believe) from the cata-} combs of the kings of Thebes. In this instance, it is not a greyhound, but a lyemer, or dog led by a leash, slender bodied, high on the legs, with a truncated tail carried high, and even marked on ,
the flank like a modern hound of the rusty-grey ~ 7
breed of the East. The hunter, holding a bow in- its case, leads the dog by a slip rope, as was done
4
_ 108 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,
formerly in Europe with the brachet. This figure we are inclined to regard as representing the Ely- mean dog, perhaps first introduced into Egypt by the shepherd conquerors, or brought home by Sesos- tris after his Asiatic expedition to the Oxus.
Although there is little doubt, that the Braque of the French, and its diminutive Brachet of the old English romances, and Rachet of the Scots, is also the Brac, or Breac, of the British Celts, it may be questioned whether that race was the same we now call the hound and beagle. Mr. Pennant thinks the beagle is described by Oppian under the name of Agasseus; but we take
Tuv, dace HOTHTOV, ACIOT LIX OU, Supadi voles, Crooked, slender, rugged, and full eyed,
to be, as well as what follows concerning the powers of scent, more applicable, on the whole, to a native terrier. The word being Celtic, and designating a spotted species, as it would appear, of three colours. There is a singular coincidence in the oldest Cinga- lese tales, of the Ceylonese Buddhists, who narrate a Mythus respecting their first arrival, wherein a dog of three colours performs a conspicuous part ; and, in the romance of Sir Tristrem and the Bele Ysonde, where another three-coloured dog, evi- dently typifying some druidical sect, is equally pro- minent. For although these, and other romantic episodes of the round table, appear at present in a form which they acquired in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they are all extracted from mythological
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 109
British poems of the Pagan period, and represent more recondite doctrines than their present Armori- can tenour pourtrays. Such is also the fact in the tale relating to the Brachet with the leash, whereon was inscribed the whole mystery of the chace ; which having strayed, and passed into other hands, caused a feud among King Arthurs knights.* These poems establish the antiquity of spotted hunting- dogs, or hounds, at a remote period in the Kast, and, in the West, reproduce them already before its historical era; but disproves their British origin, and leaves the question of the pendulous ears unde- termined. Hounds, shaped like the present, can- | not be traced in the old Frankish and Anglo-Saxon / manuscripts, they are all coursing greyhounds; and ' this character is continued, with but few exceptions, in the emblem of fidelity or gentility, usually couched on monuments at the feet of the effigies of knights, to the last period of recumbent figures.
We may therefore conclude, that the term Brac- cus,t Braque, or Brachet, originally designated a sporting dog in general ; for sometimes a lady carries onè upon her palfrey, at others, it follows a knight or page, and is engaged even in quelling a boar. The old St. Hubert hound may well have answered these purposes.
* See Mone, Geschichte des Heidenthums ; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel ; Geoffrey of Monmouth ; Thomas of Britain, &e. `
+ This term was first applied to the Greek Alopecides, by Niphus, about 1550, and certainly without propriety.
.110 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
But the type of a true hound being the Sleuch, Slot, or Blood-hound, although it may have been found in Umbria, and there is little doubt that it existed in Gaul before the introduction of Christi- anity, we owe to the East the great and improved breeds which constitute the present race. The blood-hound, so remarkable for his tracking sagacity, was used in the ferocious wars between our Edwards and the Scottish Bruces; by Henry VIII. in France ; and still more inhumanly by the Spaniards in Peru ; and by Elizabeth, in the Irish wars, where the Earl of Essex had no less than 800 of them in his army.* Even so late as the Maroon rebellion in Jamaica, and Bonaparte’s attempt to recover St. Domingo, blood-hounds were trained to hunt human beings like wild beasts. A black race of hounds was already established in the Ardennes in the sixth century, having been brought thither, according to legends, by St. Hubert, from the south of Gaul ; we may surmise that it was derived from the East, for Christian pilgrims of rank, on their return from Palestine, before the crusades, brought from Con- stantinople a white race, which they offered at the shrine of St. Roch, because he was the patron under whose invocation persons suffering in fear of hydro- phobia were supposed to receive protection; but the breed was no less called after St. Hubert, the patron of hunting. The black and the white were most likely soon regarded as types of the Pagan and the Christian conditions of existence; and although
* Camerarius, C. 104, centur, 12.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 111
the last mentioned were larger and more prized, it seems that the breed never Jossa numerous, and both continued to be denominated dogs of St. Hu- ` bert to the time of the late revolution. Of the Talbots of England we know not the origin; but, it is likely, that some individual pilgrim of the illus- trious family bearing that name brought the breed from Palestine.
About the middle of the thirteenth century, Saint Louis brought back from the same region a third breed of hounds, whose prevailing colour was a rufous-grey (gris de lièvre); they were high on the legs, with handsome feet and large ears ; they were bold, and even vehement; superior in speed to the Saint Hubert races, but with inferior sensi- bility of nose.
A fourth race was formed by Louis XII. ; it was denominated Clerk’s-hounds (chiens greffiers), be- cause they were derived from a cross between the } white Saint Hubert’s with a Bracco bitch brought ¢ from Italy, the property of one of the clerks of the , King’s househould.* The house and lodges in the park of Saint Germains were built to Fates this breed, which united all the good qualities of the other running dogs, without their defects. They were usually shite, with a tan spot on the body, and appear to be the progenitors of our present hounds.
On referring to the splendidly illuminated MS, hunting codes of Philip the Good, Duke of Bur-
*. Sonnini’s edition of Buffon, in his. Addenda,
>
hr INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
gundy (1425--1440), of Charles the Bold, his son, a book bearing the title of Le rot Modus; a third, of the Emperor Maximilian of Austria; and a fourth, once the property of Charles V., all in the library of the Dukes of Burgundy, at Brussels, we find boar-hunts, where well executed dogs represent stag-hounds with ample ears, but with nearly the whole fur of a rusty-red colour, and only a few are white, with two or three large spots of an ashy- grey; they greatly resemble a breed of Saint Ber- nard Alpine dogs, still preserved. The Blood-. hounds, or Limers, are quite white.
F’ox-hounds, or hounds trained to fox-hunting, were first formed by the order of Louis XIII. ; who, being fond of that sport, and impatient of the mode then in use, which consisted in sending turnspits into the earths, desired, according to M. Robert de Salnove, lieutenant of the chase, to have dogs trained to run after unkennelled foxes.
With regard to the red-haired just mentioned, the race was still kept up, to hunt wolves, so late as the year 1779. .
In the book of the Emperor Maximilian, a stag- hunt exhibits dogs of the same rust colour ; others are white, with the back, head, and ears black, or black with some rufous. The Limers are rusty- brown and yellowish-grey. The coursing-dogs are pure white; but in all the hunting scenes of the above MSS. other dogs are intermixed with the packs; and the black Saint Hubert’s can be dis- tinguished, though no longer prominent, as they
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 118
were less esteemed. The mixture shows, that the system of couples, or matches of different coloure and bred dogs, was still in full force. : In 1556, a print was published at Cadiz of a dog then recently brought from India. The form of the animal shows an intermediate between a grey- hound and. a hound, having a light but strong frame, a deep chest, and the head shorter than the first named, but with small half dejected ears. It came, most likely, from a breed belonging to the Mahommedan Princes of the west coast, and may be the origin of Buffon’s name of “ Braque de Ben- f gale ;” although we would be inclined to regard it)
as the parent of the cross which produced the Pal- matian, or our present coach-dog, being white inj colour, and entirely covered with small black)
spots.
3 It has been well said, that dogs have innate qua- lities; such as the keenness of scent, natural im- pulse to chase, in the hound; the ardour to seek, and the desire of finding, in the spaniel and pointer ; and the turn to watching and guarding, as in the mastiff and sheep-dog. These are natural, not arti- ficial qualities, only to be developed in given direc- tions by education, and not transferable to other races at will, nor in equal proportion. The great advantage derived from these various powers in different races of dogs, is well appreciated in our state of civilization ; but still it is not nearly of such importance here, as it is among those that journey in the wild regions of the world. Mr. Burchell, in
VoL, II. H
114 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
his African Travels, illustrates this fact no less ele- gantly than correctly. “Our pack of dogs,” says that enterprising naturalist, “consisted of about five-and-twenty, of various sorts and sizes. This variety, though not altogether intentional, as I was obliged to take any that could be procured, was of the greatest service on such an expedition, as I ob- served that some gave notice of danger in one way, and others in another. Some were more disposed to watch against men, and others against wild beasts. Some discovered an enemy by their quick- ness of hearing, others by that of scent; some for speed. in pursuing game; some were useful only for their vigilance and barking, and others for their courage in holding ferocious animals at bay. So large a pack was not, indeed, maintained, without adding greatly to our care and trouble, in supplying them with meat and water, for it was sometimes difficult to procure for them enough of the latter ; but their services were invaluable, often contri- buting to our safety, and always to our ease, by their constant vigilance, as we felt a confidence that no danger could approach us at night, without be- ing announced by their barking. No circumstances couid render the value and fidelity of these animals so conspicuous and sensible, as a journey through re- gions which, abounding in wild beasts of almost every class, gave continual opportunities of witnessing the strong contrast in their habits, between the fe- rocious beasts of prey which fly at the approach of man, and these kind, but too often injured, com-
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 115
panions of the human race. Many times, when we have been travelling over plains where those have fled the moment we appeared in sight, have I turned my eyes towards my dogs to admire their attachment, and have felt a grateful affection to- wards them for preferring our society to the wild liberty of other quadrupeds. Often, in the middle of the night, when all my people have been fast asleep around the fire, have I stood to contemplate these faithful animals lying by their side, and have learned to esteem them for their social inclination to mankind. When wandering over pathless deserts, oppressed with vexation and distress at the conduct of my own men, I have turned to these as my only friends, and felt how much inferior to them was man, when actuated only by selfish views.
“ The familiarity which subsists between this animal and our own race, is so common to almost every country on the globe, that any remark upon it must seem superfluous; but I cannot avoid be- lieving, that it is the universality of the fact which prevents the greater part of mankind from reflecting duly on the subject. While almost every other quadruped fears man as its most formidable enemy, here is one which regards him as his companion, and follows him as his friend. We must not mis- take the nature of the case: it is not because we train him to our use, and have made choice of him in preference to other animals; but because this particular species feels a natural desire to be useful. to man, and from spontaneous impulse attaches it-
116 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
self to him. Were it not so, we should see, in various countries, an equal familiarity with various other quadrupeds, according to the habits, the taste, or the caprice of different nations. But, every where, it is the dog only takes delight in associating with us, in sharing our abode, and is even jealous that our attention should be bestowed on him alone: it is he who knows us personally, watches for us, and warns us of danger. It is impossible for the naturalist, when taking a survey of the whole ani- ‘mal creation, not to feel a conviction, that this friendship between two creatures so different from
~~ each other, must be the result of the laws of nature ;
nor can the humane and feeling mind avoid the belief, that kindness to those animals from which he derives continued and essential assistance, is part of his moral duty.”
Of the hybrids proceeding from wolves, jackals and foxes, further details are likewise unnecessary ; but, before mention is made of several feral races of dogs now existing, it may be proper to allude to a hybrid species pretended to be derived from a bear and mastiff. Such an individual was lately exhi- bited in London; and a curious account of one is found in the Histoires prodigeuses, par P. Bouais- turau, Paris, 1582, quoted in the Penny Cyclo- pedia, article Bear, to which we refer. But as no true mastiff is sufficiently rugged to’ be tricked by bearwards into the resemblance of even an hybrid, and the engraving in the work shows also indica- tions departing from that race, the difficulty may
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 117
perhaps be solved, by presuming, that the New- foundland breed of dogs, being then probably only first introduced, the pretended hybrid was either of that race, or a cross with a mastiff, having had the tail cut off, and the ears, if not then erect, set up, by scarifying their internal surface. As these ani- mals did not at first bark, their howling was well calculated to deceive the unwary; and their wild and active manners are not even now entirely sub- dued in their native country. There are, however, in Russia, dogs that might pass for this kind of hybrid, as will be noticed in the account of the Siberian varieties.
THE FERAL DOGS.
Canes Seri.
Unper the above designation, we mean to notice domestic dogs which have regained their liberty, and subsisting entirely upon their own intelligence for many generations, have resumed the greater part, if not all the characteristics, which it may be sup- posed they possessed before their former subjuga- tion. Having already described species aborigine wild, those fairly amenable to the present group are reduced to but few varieties. The first we have to mention is the
Feral Dog of Natolia. Ictinus of the ancients ? This race is nearly equal to the local wolf in size, and resembles the shepherds-dog of the country, but has a tail more like a brush, the muzzle more pointed, and the colours of the fur rufous-grey, not unlike both the former, yet easily distinguishable. Unlike the wolf, they hunt in open day, running in packs of ten or twelve; they do not molest man, but, when attacked, they show an audacity which wolves never manifest. In 1819, the son of a lady of our acquaintance, in company with a brother Midshipman of H. M. ship Spartan, went on shore to the plain. of Troy, attended by guides of the
THE FERAL DOGS. 119
country, and several seamen. A troop of these dogs came down, and. were recognised by the country people, who warned the young officers not to fire at them; but midshipmen are not so easily baulked, one fired and missed his object, when the whole pack immediately came bounding down towards them, and the party found it necessary to run for the shore, whither the feral dogs, being satisfied with their victory, pursued them no fur- ther. Feral Dog of Russia.—This race may be of the same stock as the first mentioned. They are very wolf-like in appearance and colours, but smaller, and far less audacious than the Turkish. How they maintain themselves in the open country we have not learnt ; but, subsisting like the street-dogs of Turkish cities, they make burrows in the ramparts, on the glacis, and other banks of earth on the skirts of towns, and even at St. Petersburgh, are prowl- ing about in the night for carrion, and, in winter, inclined to molest the defenceless. We were told by a friend, long resident in the Imperial capital, _ that one evening he, and another British merchant, were obliged to go out to the rescue of a boy, sent with a message across the ice of the Neva, who was observed by the gentlemen to be beset by these animals. More recently, the government ordered the police to extirpate them about the city; but with what success is not known. It is possible that the dog-wolves of the Canopian Gulph, on the Palus Mæotis, which molested the fishermen, before
120 THE FERAL DOGS,
noticed, were of the same race; and, therefore, that they are really of a wild species, which has, of its own accord, approximated mankind. Hence, also, may be derived the true street-dogs of all the cities of Western Asia.
Among the feral dogs of the New World, men- tion has already been made of the Aguara of the Woods. But there is a race whose origin is not doubtful, and which, although it is said to exist also in South America, we denominate the
\ \ FERAL DOG OF ST. DOMINGO.
Canis Haitensis, H. SMITH.
PLATE I,
THE specimen from which the figure and the fol- lowing description were taken, was brought to Spanish-Town, Jamaica, by a French officer taken prisoner when General le Clerc’s army endeavoured to escape from the victorious progress of the negroes. The owner described it to be a wild hound, of the race formerly used by the Spaniards for their con- quests in the western hemisphere, when they were trained like blood-hounds; and a breed of them having been lost in the woods of Haiti, had there
FERAL DOG OF ST. DOMINGO. 121
resumed its original wild state, continuing for se- veral ages to live independent, and occasionally committing great depredations upon the stock of the graziers. The individual was obtained from the vicinity of Samana Bay, among others purchased from the Spanish colonists, for the odious purpose of hunting the French negro people, which at that time refused to return to slavery, after, by a na- tional decree of France, their liberty had been by law established. The dog was of such an aspect, as at first sight to strike the attention. In stature, he was at least equal to the largest Scottish or Rus- sian greyhound, or about twenty-eight inches high at the shoulder, with the head shaped like the wire- | haired terrier ; large light brown eyes; small ears, - pointed, and only slightly bent down at the tips’;
the neck long and full; the chest very deep; the croup slightly arched; the limbs muscular, but light, ‘and the tail not reaching to the tarsus, scan- tily furnished with long dark hair; the muzzle was black, as well as the eyelids, lips, and the whole hide ; but his colour _was-an uniform pale blue-ash, 7 the hair being § ‘short, scanty, coarse, and apparently i
without a woolly fur beneath. On the lips, inside of the ears, and above the eyes, there was some whitish-grey ; and the back of the ears was dark slate colour. The look and motions of this animal at once told consciousness of superiority. As he passed down the streets all the house curs slunk away; when within our lodging, the family dog had disappeared, although he had neither growled
] broader at the muzzle, the back flatter, and the | hair was longer, coarser, more shaggy, and of a
} dark blackish ash, without any spot. A third,
122 FERAL DOG OF ST. DOMINGO.
or barked. His master said he was inoffensive, but requested he might not be touched. The hair, from the ridge of the nose, feathered to the right and left over the eyes, forming two ciliated arches, and the brows appeared very prominent. We were assured, that he followed a human track, or any scent he was laid on, with silence and great rapi- dity ; but, unlike the common blood-hound, when he came upon his quarry, it was impossible to pre- vent his attacking and seizing his victim. Accord- ing tothe owner, who, it seemed, was the person the government had employed to purchase these dogs, the Spanish graziers were equally anxious to destroy all the old dogs of the breed they could find
| in the country, and to secure all the young for do-
mestication ; because, when bred up on the farms, they were excellent guardians of the live stock, de- fending them equally against their own breed, and human thieves; and, as they attacked with little warning, strangers could not easily conciliate them © by any manoeuvres,
We think this to be the race of St. Domingo greyhounds indistinctly mentioned by Buffon. We saw another specimen, evidently of the same race, but belonging to the northern states of South Ame- rica, brought by a Spanish cattle-dealer to the port of Kingston; the animal was of inferior stature,
though still a large dog. The head appeared
FERAL DOG OF ST. DOMINGO. 128
likewise blackish ash, came from Cuba; but neh Rae ther of the last had the greyhound lurcher aspect, | but seemed to have a cross of the Spanish common’,
' Cattle-dog.* Portraits of these kind of dogs occur in some of the Spanish old masters; and, consider- ing the evident resemblance they bear to the old northern Danish dog, it may be conjectured that the race was originally brought to Spain by the Suevi and Alans, and afterwards carried to the New World for the purposes of war.
There is also in Mexico a small feral dog; but the accounts hitherto received are so obscure, that we shall defer to notice it until we describe the Alco. But, on the Pampas of South America, there are numerous troops of Perros zimarrones, or feral | dogs, having the undetermined form of the mixture | of all the breeds that have been imported from | Europe, and thus assuming the shape of cur-dogs, or of a primitive species. They have the ears erect, or the tips but. slightly bent forward. They are bold, sagacious; not hostile to man, but destruc- tive to the calves and foals of the wild herds. When taken very young, they may be tamed; but, when old, they are totally irreclaimable. They hunt singly, or in troops; burrow in the open country ; ` and, when redomesticated, they are distinguished
. for their superior courage and acuter senses.
* These races of dogs were more anciently known in Europe by the name of Buccaneer dogs (Chiens des Flibustiers), be- cause several were brought home by them. We have lately: seen one brought from the Falkland Islands.
THE FAMILIAR DOGS.
Canes familhares.
| We now come to the true domesticated races ; and, | beginning with those placed nearest the Arctic Circle | in both hemispheres, we find a group of large dogs, | all assuming a wolfish aspect, having a tapering
nose, pointed ears, long hair, and, almost without exception, a black and white livery.
In the group of Arctic dogs of both continents, there is an uniformity of structure and appearance, showing but a small intermixture of the blood of other races in some of those in the west, who have the anterior part of the head very sharp. They are, in general, dogs of large size and height, only par- tially reclaimed, and, consequently, exceedingly fierce. The body is short and deep; the limbs strong and elevated; the feet rather broad, often
_webbed, and, in some instances, furred; the hair thick, close, and undulating. They swim with great facility; burrow in the snow; and, during the period when they are turned out to seek their own sustenance, hunt in packs, or singly, and fish with considerable dexterity. Their courage and perseverance is equal to that of a bull-dog, never
THE FAMILIAR DOGS. 125
giving up a contest while life lasts; hence they often destroy each other in combat. In their native regions they are not liable to canine madness ; al- though, in Sweden and Norway, wolves are occa- sionally attacked with that dreadful scourge in the middle of winter.
THE WOLF-DOGS.
THE SIBERIAN DOG.
Canis Sibericus.
Kosha of the Natives.
Tus variety of the Arctic group differs in stature very considerably. One exhibited some ‘years ago, by a M. Chabert, at Bath, was above three feet in height. The ears resembled those of a bear; the head, that of a wolf; and the tail was like a fox’s brush ; in fur and colour it looked like a greyish wolf. There may have been a cross of the great Russian watch-dog in this individual; for the dogs of Kamtschatka are smaller, though similarly formed. Their colour is mixed black and white, the tips of the ears slightly drooping ; and their attachment to home, only a kind of periodical instinct which brings them to their masters’ doors, after they have roamed wild for many weeks to provide for them-
486 THE SIBERIAN DOG.
selves, and the time is come again when they are to resume their labours at the sleigh. From this period, they are only fed with a very small propor- tion of the offals of putrid fish; being treated with absolute unkindness, they return the masters’ beha- viour by a cunning and a rooted ill will. When about to be yoked to a sleigh they send forth a most dismal howling; but when once yoked in file, they become silent, and move off at a rapid pace, not without occasional attempts to upset the driver.
The two dogs figured by Buffon differ from the Kamtschatka race, by having the hair much longer, and particularly by that upon’ the forehead over- hanging the eyes; the tail being curled close over the back ; and the colour on that part of the body a dull ashy-brown. The second is figured much lower on the legs, nearly entirely white; and the face still more marked with a profusion of hair. These two were evidently inland varieties, probably not further north or east than Tobolsk.
THE ESQUIMAUX DOG.
Canis Borealis.
‘PLATE IL
Tuts is the race of the Arctic Circle in America, most extensively spread, and clearly of the same origin as that of North-eastern Asia. These dogs are powerful in their structure, equalling the mastiff in size, covered with long, rather curling hair, and with a bushy tail, very much curled over the back ; the ears are short and pointed, and the face clothed with short hairs, as well as the lower part of the extremities. They are remarkably intelligent, pa- tient, and enduring; dragging sleighs with great rapidity, hunting with courage and skill, and carry- ing burdens without repining. Their temper is good, although im aspect they greatly resemble a wolf. Several have been brought to England by the members of the late Arctic expedition. Many are black and white; others of a dingy white ; and ` those on the coast of Labrador are often brown and. white. The drawing for our plate of this dog was taken from a specimen kept in the Prince's Street Gardens, in Edinburgh. It had more the character of a wolf
128 THE ESQUIMAUX DOG.
than of a dog. The following account has been kindly communicated to us by Mr. Cleghorn, nur- seryman and seed-merchant, in whose possession the dog was when the drawing was made :—
The Esquimaux dog was possessed of very great sagacity in some respects, more than any dog I have ever seen. I may mention one instance. In coming along a tountry road, a hare started, and, in place of running after the hare in the usual way, the dog pushed himself through the hedge, crossed the field, and, when past the hare, through the hedge again, as if to meet her direct. It is needless to remark, that the hare doubled through the hedge; but had it been in an open country, there would have been a noble chase. One particular. characteristic of the dog was, that he forms a parti- cular attachment to his master; and however kind - others may be, they never can gain his affection, even from coaxing with food, or otherwise; and, whenever set at liberty, rushes to the spot where the individual of his attachment was. I may give one or two instances, among many. One morning he was let loose by some of the men on the ground, he instantly bounded from them to my house, and the kitchen-door being open, found his way through it, when, to the great amazement of all, he leaped into the bed where I was sleeping, and fawned in the most affectionate manner upon me. Another instance was, When the dog was with me going up the steep bank of the Princes Street Garden, F slipped my foot and came down, when he imme-
. THE ESQUIMAUX DOG. 129
diately seized me by the coat, as if to render assist- ance in raising me. N otwithstanding this parti- cular affection to some, he was in the habit of biting others, without giving the least warning or indication of anger. He never barked, but at times had a sort of whine. He was remarkably cunning, and much resembled the fox; for he was in the practice of strewing his meat round him, to induce fowls or rats to come within his reach, while he lay watching, as if asleep, when he instantly pounced upon them, and always with success. He was swift, and had a noble appearance when running, and carried his fine bushy tail inclining downwards, with the body nearly one-third more extended in appearance than while standing, as shown in the illustration.
I returned him to his owner some years ago, but do not know whether he be still alive.
VOE I1;
THE ICELAND DOG.
Canis Islandicus. i
Fiaar-hund.
Tae Norwegian emigrants to Iceland seem to have carried a race of dogs to its shores, which at pre- sent is not found in the parent country. The head is rounder, and the snout more pointed, than the pre- ceding. In stature, it is not larger than that of Kamtschatka, and in fur like the Esquimaux; the ears are upright, and the lips flaccid; the colours white and black, or white and brown. This race is somewhat allied to the following, and therefore may have been obtained from the Skrelings or Esqui-
maux, by the adventurers who first visited Green- land.
THE HARE-INDIAN DOG.
Canis lagopus; RICHARDSON.
Tuts kind is clearly of American origin, and be- oe _ longs exclusively to the race of man of the western | continent. At the first glance, we recognise in the aspect an affinity with the Dusicyon group, before described ; and, in particular, with those Canidae, which may hereafter form a more distinct section, under the name of Cynalopecides. A specimen of
this race was found by Dr. Richardson on the Mac- kenzie River; and he describes it as small in size, with a slender make; having a large foot; a nar- row, elongated, and pointed muzzle; ears broad at the base, sharp at the tip, and perfectly erect; the legs rather long and slender; and the tail, thick and bushy, is slightly curved upwards; the body is covered with long straight hair, in colour white, with clouds of blackish ash and brown intermixed; the ears outside brown, white within; the feet are clothed with fur, and spreading the toes to some breadth. These animals run upon the snow when heavier game sink in. A pair is now in the Zoolo- gical Gardens, where they are gentle and confident. In their native land they never bark. |
he ;
l
pe t
THE NEWFOUNDLAND DOG, ORIGINAL BREED.
Canis Terre Nove, H. SMITH,
PLATE IIL.
Tax breed of these handsome and powerful dogs, now common in Great Britain, is partially crossed with others, and therefore differs somewhat from the original indigenous race of America; and is also, in several respects, unlike the Esquimaux race, being longer in the back, more loosely made, with rather a fuller muzzle, partially drooping ears, and a long; not curly fur. The hound seems to have crossed in the breed; for, even in Newfound- land, there are individuals of such enormous bulk, that not even the Irish greyhound, though higher at the shoulder, is to be compared with it, in length and weight of body. We know of one that, when desired to show himself, would immediately stand up, and place his fore-feet against the lintel of any room-door. But these very large dogs are, in ge- neral, of a white colour, spotted with black. In our north-eastern colonies of America, those that were considered to be of the original stock were smaller than the large breed now in England; the
THE NEWFOUNDLAND DOG. 138
body was more slender, the forehead more arched, the muzzle not so blunt, their aspect wilder, less confident; and they were nearly all of a totally black colour, excepting a bright rust-coloured spot aboye each eye, some fulvous towards the nose, throat, and upon the joints; there was also a little white about the feet, and in the end of the tail: Their eyes were rather small, and of a light brown. This race is nothing inferior to the best sheep-dogs in natural powers of intellect; endless anecdotes of Sagacity are related of them in their natural regions, — as well as in Europe. The true breed of this race is almost semi-palmated ; and, consequently, they swim, dive, and endure the water, better and longer_/ than any other dog in existence. We possessed, for a short time, one that had been picked up swimming in the Bay of Biscay, and was observed by a man at the mast head, the ship whence he must have come being out of sight; a boat was lowered, and the animal, when taken in, did not give signs of extreme fatigue. We lost him in a short time; being, no doubt, again enticed on board of some vessel. No dog is better qualified to serve in harness, or fitter to watch and guard property on shore, or vessels in the coasting trade, rivers, or canals. As a water-dog, he can be taught to exe- cute almost any command; and his kind disposi- tion makes training easy, when used in the field.
A few years ago, the number about St. John’s, in ` Newfoundland, was estimated at 2,000, or more ; they were left to shift for themselves during the
134 THE NEWFOUNDLAND DOG.
whole fishing season, and probably still are thus ‘suffered to remain starving, diseased, and even dan- gerous to the rest of the population. After that period, they labour in drawing wood, fish, and mer- chandise ; and one dog is estimated to be able to maintain his master during winter. True hydro- phobia does not attack them there; but a kind of plague, originating in the neglect and misery they suffer, occasionally destroys great numbers.
THE NOOTKA DOG.
Canis laniger nobis, H. SMITH. j
We mention this breed of dogs, because it seems to indicate the direction whence the Esquimaux and the Newfoundland races are derived, and thereby show that they are of Asiatic origin. The Nootka is large, with pointed upright ears, docile, but chiefly valuable on account of the immense load of fur 1t bears on the back, of white, and brown, and black colours, but having the woolly proportion so great and fine, that it may well be called a fleece ; for, when shorn off, it is sufficiently interwoven to lift the whole produce of one animal by grasping a single handful. The natives spin and work it along
THE NOOTKA DOG. 135.
with other wool into garments; and we think this
' dog might be introduced, with beneficial effect, among the peasantry of Norway, if not of Scot-
land.*
THE ALCO.
‘Canis Alco, YOUNG.
PLATE IV.
Tus race, of dogs, for a long time only known from a wretched figure published by Recchi in the work of Fernandes, remains still to be fully made out. Recchi says, his specimen was called Yzi-cuinte potzotli; Fernandes gave it the name of Michua canens; while that of Alco, accord- ing to Buffon, was generica. We may ob- serve, in passing, that these names seem all to ~ contain an old designation of dog belonging to the tongues of the old world. The small head, short neck, and very bulky body of the old figure, have not since been recognised; and Humboldt viewed the Alco to be of the shepherd-dog race. The
* Vancouver’s Voyage to Nootka Sound. Also personal in- formation from an Indian, who had resided two years at Nootka, \
136 THE ALCO.
colours are described as white and yellow; and in Buffon’s supplement, white and black, with rufous spots above the eyes. All writers agree that itis a small animal, kept as a kind of lapdog by the women, and yet occasionally returning to the state of independence. Mr. W. Bullock brought from Mexico a specimen, which is here figured ; it was stuffed, and shown in his exhibition of Mexican curiosities at the Egyptian Hall. That enterprising traveller described it as of the wild race ; yet, from its appearance, we at first considered it to be a Newfoundland puppy. It was small, with rather a large head ; elongated occiput ; full muzzle ; pen- dulous ears; having long soft hair on the body. In colour, it was entirely white, excepting a large black spot covering each čar, and part of the fore- head and cheek, with a fulvous mark above each eye, and another black spot on the rump; the tail was rather long, well fringed, and white.
The Goschis of Charlevoix, or Glasques of Gar- cilasso and Peres, were small dogs absolutely mute, | with downy, or silky hair of different, and often _ of bright colours, possessed by the natives of St. | Domingo, and used in the chace before the arrival \ of. the Spaniards. The name appears to be a mu-
tation of Guarachay, already noticed; and, in that case, it must have been imported from the southern continent; most likely by the conquering Caribs.
Reverting to the dogs of the more temperate regions of the old continent, we find the lupine ap- pearance still strongly marked in the characters of
THE ALCO. Log.
the head, the stature, and the hair. They belong almost entirely to Europe; and those in southern locations appear to have reached them in the mi- Stations of the earlier Celtæ, and subsequent Gothic tribes, without materially altering their look or character. Of these, the first unquestionably is
THE SHEPHERD'S, OR SHEEP-DOG.
Canis domesticus.
PLATE V.
Burron thinks this race, emphatically called the Familiar and Domestic Dog, the parent stock of the whole species, as to be among those not so fully reclaimed as others, because its ears are still erect! The sheep-dog is scarcely, if at all, inferior to the Newfoundland dog in natural powers of intellect, and superior to him in that long train- Ing to certain duties which require the utmost Sagacity, vigilance, and patience, till it is contended by some that they are become innate. His civili- zation is, no doubt, older than’ the shepherd state of man; and we see in his conduct an instinctive impulse of order, and of care, which is strongly im-
A Spee appara eines scien ; Seam a ae
138 THE SHEPHERD'S DOG.
pressed upon the sedate and self-possessed expres sion of his countenance. We have witnessed, with astonishment, with what rapidity, by a few words, or a sign of his master, a dog of this breed would fly over a vast surface of open country, single out, drive together, and bring up a particular class of sheep from among a large flock, and lead them to our feet. All this was effected, without confusion, in a few moments, and without the least violence. We have witnessed the care they take of their charge, and with what readiness they chastise those that molest them, in the case of a cur biting a sheep in the rear of the flock, and unseen by the shep- herd. This assault was committed by a tailor's dog, but not unmarked by the other, who imme- diately seized him, and dragging the delinquent into a puddle, while holding his ear, kept dabbling him in the mud with exemplary gravity ; the cur yelled, the tailor came slipshod with his goose to — the rescue, and having flung it at the sheep-dog and ` missed him, stood by gaping, not venturing to fetch it back until the castigation was over, and the dog — had followed the flock.
The sheep-dog is seldom two feet high, but his make is muscular; the nose rather pointed; the ears erect; and the colours of the hair black and fulvous; the fur is rather long and rough. In Great Britain, and more particularly in Scotland, the cdlours are more mixed with shades of brown, and the ears are often drooping at the tips.
The drover, or cattle-dog, is somewhat larger,
THE GREAT WOLF-DOG. l 139
and still more rugged in coat. It is to be wished that the last mentioned were trained with more at- tention to humanity; for, taking their manners ` from the very unfeeling class of men who own . them, we sometimes witness acts of cruel depravity perpetrated upon droves and era that merit the bitterest reprehension.
The Great Wolf-dog is not common in central Europe ; and appears at present almost confined to Spain, where, no doubt, it was introduced by the Goths. It is a large race, little inferior to the mas- tiff, with a pointed nose, erect ears, a long silky coat, and a very bushy, or rather feathery tail, curled over the back. In colour it is mostly white, with great clouds of fulvous, or brown. The ac- count given by Olaus Magnus shows, that in his time this variety abounded in the north of Sweden and Norway.
The Molossian and Spartan dogs are described * to vary in colour through different shades, from dark brown to bright i their long fur being very soft, thick, and glossy. In size they are equal to an English mastiff. They have a long nose; deli- cate ears, finely pointed ; magnificent tail; legs of a moderate length; with a body nicely roundea, and compact. There seems reason to think, that these four-footed tenants of Greece have preserved their pedigree unimpaired ; as they possess all that strength, swiftness, sagacity, and fidelity, which are ascribed to them by the ancient authors. Hence,
* Hughes’s Travels in Greece, Vol. i. p. 484.
a cae ee oe eana
140 THE CALABRIAN DOG.
it would seem, that the Spartan and Molossian were of the same breed, or, at least, held in equal estimation. We are, however, told by Ulisius, that the Spartan were totally degenerated in his time, while the Molossian remained in their pristine vigour.*
The Calabrian dog is a beautiful and sagacious animal, representing the Newfoundland dog in Europe. It is of smaller size, with long, rather curly hair; ears bent down, but not floccose; a fine bushy and curled tail, and often entirely of a
-white colour. Fine specimens of this race are, or
were, in the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park. They are well described and figured in that delight- ful work, called the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society ; but we do not think it is strictly the Canis Pomeranus, but nearly allied to
* Paulatim vero exinde mistis non illis modo inter se, sed velocibus quoque cum illis maxime extra patriam suam adeo degeneravit proles eorum, ut nihil fere preter nomen ab origine sua serva verint. Fracastor’s translator adds :—Se Molossi pero fino a nostri ultimi tempi han conservado l'antico valore e robustessa.—LALconz, I5, i
THE ALPINE, OR GREAT ST. BERNARD DOG.
PLATE VI.
z
So advantageously known for the great services ren- dered to mankind, by its activity, intelligence, and strength, in administering to the safety of travellers thrötiph the snowy passes of the mountains leading to Italy. This race is still more nearly allied to the Newfoundland dog, in form, stature, hair, and co- lours; but the head and ears are like that of a water-spaniel. We have made drawings of several, and they are all white, with black or fulvous spots the breed is not numerous. There is another race, trained to the same service, with close short hair, and more or less marked with grey, liver-colour, and black clouds, betraying an intermixture with the race of French Matin, or great Danish dogs. Both are trained in the winter time to carry a basket with some food and wine; and, thus equipped, they sally forth from the Hospice of St. Bernard, and other passes, in search of travellers who may have lost their way, or fallen beneath the snows of the preceding night. They are followed by the Monks devoted to that service of humanity, and every winter several lives are saved by their united means.
142 THE ALPINE DOG.
The animal, of which we have given a figure, seems rather to belong to the second race mentioned by Colonel Smith, having a closer and shorter hair. We are indebted to the kindness of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder for permission to make our drawing from a fine animal in his possession; and we add the account which was transmitted for our use.
To W. H. Lizars, Esq.
The Grange House, 26th June, 1839.
Dear Sir,—My St. Bernard dog, Bass, whom you have honoured so far as to have his portrait taken by Mr. Stewart, was brought home by Sir Hew Dalrymple of North Berwick, Baronet, direct- from the Great St. Bernard, and Sir Hew presented him to me in December, 1837, when he was a puppy of about four or five months; so that he may now be reckoned about a year and nine months old. He can hardly, therefore, be said to have reached his full size. His bark, as you may have heard, is tremendous; so loud, indeed, that I have often distinguished it when in the Meadow Walk, nearly a mile off. To it I was indebted for the recovery of the dog when stolen by some carters, not long after I got him. He had been some time missing, when, to my great joy, one of the letter-carriers brought him back; and the man’s account was, that. in going along a certain street he heard his bark from the inside of a yard, and knew it imme- diately. He knocked at the gate, and immediately
THE ALPINE DOG. — `, 183
said to the owner of the premises, “ You have got: Sir Thomas Lauder's big dog.” The man denied it. “ But I know you have,” continued the letter-car- rier. “I can swear that I heard the bark of Sir Thomas's big dog ; for there is no other dog in or about all Edinburgh that has such a bark.” The man then admitted that he had a large dog, which he had bought for a trifle from a couple of coal- carters; and at last, with great reluctance, he gave up the dog to the letter-carrier, who brought him home here. But though Bass’s bark is so terrific, he is the best natured and most playful dog I ever saw ; so much so, indeed, that the small King Charles’s spaniel lapdog, Raith, whom Mr. Stewart has also introduced into the same picture, used to tyrannize cover him for many months after he came here from abroad. I have seen the little creature run furi- ously at the great animal when gnawing a bone, who instantly turned himself submissively over on his back, with all his legs in the air, whilst Raith, seizing the bone, would make the most absurd and unavailing attempts to bestride the enormous head of his subdued companion, with the most ludicrous affectation of the terrible growling that might be- ‘speak the loftiest description of dog indignation. Bass has for some time ceased to tolerate this tyranny, having, upon one occasion, given the little fellow an admonitory shake; but he is at all times - in perfect good humour with him, though Raith, from jealousy, is always glad to avail himself of an opportunity of flying at him. When a dog attacks `
144. THE ALPINE DOG.
Bass in the street or road, he runs away rather than quarrel; but when compelled to fight, by any per- severance in the attacking party, he turns upon him, throws his enemy down in a moment, and then, without biting him, he lays his whole immense bulk down upon him till he nearly smothers him. But this extreme softness arises from his youth ; for if he were once fairly engaged, I have no doubt that he would be most formidable either to quadru- ped or biped who should venture to attack him. To give you an idea of his strength, I may tell you an anecdote which happened a good many months ago. He took a particular fancy for one of the postmen who deliver letters here, though he was not the man whom I have already had occasion to mention. It was the duty of the postman I now allude to, be- sides delivering letters, to carry a letter-bag from one receiving-house to another, and this bag he used to give to Bass to carry. Bass always followed that man through all the villas in this neighbour- hood where he had deliveries to make; and he in- variably parted with him opposite to the gate of the Convent of St. Margaret's, and returned home. When our gate was shut here, to prevent his fol- lowing the postman, the dog always leaped a high wall to get after him. One day, when the postman was ill, or detained by some accidental circumstance, he sent a man in his place. Bass went up to the man, curiously scanning his face, whilst the man rather retired from the dog, by no means liking his appearance, and very anxious to decline all acquaint-
THE ALPINE DOG. 145
ance with him. But.as the man left the place, Bass followed him, showing strong symptoms that | he was determined to have the post-bag. The man did all he could to keep possession of it. But, at length, Bass, seeing that he had no chance of getting possession of the bag by civil entreaty, raised himself on his hind legs, and putting a great fore-paw on each of the man’s shoulders, he laid him flat on his back in the. road, and quietly pick- ing up the bag, he proceeded peaceably on his wonted way. The man, much dismayed, arose and followed the dog, making, every now and then, an ineffectual attempt to coax him to give up the bag. At the first house he came to, he told his fears, and the dilemma he was in; but the people comforted him, by telling him that the dog always carried the bag. Bass walked with the man to all the houses at which he delivered letters, and along the road till he came to the gate of St. Margaret’s, where he dropped the bag, and, making his bow to the man, he returned home. I presume I have now given you enough of Bass. His companion, Raith, is “remarkable for having, in’ his eagerness to bark at some noise at the outer-door, jumped over a window twenty-three feet and an half high, on the hard gravel. He was stunned for a time, but he broke no bones; and, after about an hour's repose on his usual pillow in the large dining-room chair, he Showed that he was as well as ever. I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, Tuo. Dick Lauper.
K
THE ALPINE DOG.
To W. H. Lizars, Esq.
The Grange House, 25th Feb. 1840. My Dear Sir,—I have nothing to add to the account which I sent you of Bass, in my letter of June last, except that he is now in great strength and beauty, follows the carriage regularly, is very ‘mueh attached to the horses, continues to be ex- tremely good-natured and playful, and very affec- tionate,—and, above all things, never forgets a person who may have had occasion to do him a kindness, Believe me always Yours truly, Tuo. Dick Lauper.
It may be added, that this race of dogs is the present breed. The Monks of St. Bernard having neglected to keep up a large stock of the old race, it was nearly destroyed by a malady some time before 1820, when, from necessity, the present breed was introduced; at least such was the infor- mation we obtained from the Vaudois peasantry in the above year.
147
THE POMERANIAN DOG.
Canis Pomeranus.
Kees of the Dutch.
Tuts race is well known in England. It differs from the former by being smaller, the nose is more pointed, the ears erect, and the bushy tail is curled over the back. These dogs are white, white and brown, or buff, and, their fur is usually long and soft; the Dutch inland navigators commonly use them to protect property on board vessels; and’ others are found as watch-dogs in German farms.
There is found in Southern China a large species of long-haired dogs, usually with a fine glossy black fur, a pointed nose, pendulous ears, and large paws. They are somewhat like the Newfoundland race, but intractable and sullen. It is most likely a race introduced from the north by the Tartars.
There is likewise, in India, a dwindled offspring of this race now mixed with the Pariahs, but still retaining the long-haired white livery of its ancient “parentage. It is most likely the residue of the quondam companions of one of the several northern invading tribes who conquered, established dominion, and were absorbed by the Hindoo race. But there is still some mark of ancient docility and usefulness ; for although they are like the Mexican Alco, and not much larger than lapdogs, they are employed to carry flambeaux at night, or on such occasions as render their services requisite.
THE WATCH-DOGS.
The Canes laniarii.
We might now proceed with the greyhound race, so nearly allied to the wolf-dogs, but that, geo- graphically, there lies between them another of the: same great family, distinguished by short hair, and
THE WATCH-DOGS. 149
a nose somewhat more widened; still, upon com- paring the skulls, their close resemblance to that of the wolf is undeniable. The race we have now be- fore us occupying a zone of the northern hemisphere, more temperate than the former, and extending from the east of Asia to the west of Europe, with a few straggling even to Africa and Mexico. We are inclined to consider them as originally descended from our Lysiscan group, and the same whence the very different names of Chao, Caow, Kya», Coo, and, finally, our word Cur are derived. The typi- cal colour of this tribe of dogs is rufous, and their aberrant, the mixture of it with black and white, or the fusion of them into bluish-grey. Great Bri- tain having, from the remotest period, other valua- ble races of dogs, scems never to have fostered the large breeds, unless the ancient slow-hound, parent of the Manchester and southern dogs, were of this group, before, by crossing with real hounds, it as- sumed their characters. It is in this tribe that some of the largest and fiercest dogs of antiquity should be sought; and that where the southern nations have found their Matin, or Mastino, which the English have improperly transferred to our original great bull-dog, by altering it into mastiff, and the Germans name Bauerhund, or farm-dog.
Although, doubtless, some intermixture of the mastiff race may be believed to have occurred in the breeds known by the ancients in the north and east of Greece, it is probable that the Epirotic, Molos- Sian, Chaonian, Hircanian, Albanian, and Iberian
150 TURKMEN WATCH-DOG,
dogs, were at least partially of the present group. Such were also those of the Cymbers, and, in gene- ral, of the colonizing nations during their movement towards the west. Hence, we find, that in several European languages, this tribe is confounded with the mastiff called Alan and Alano, because that people may have reared a remarkable breed of them. The dogs of this group are possessed of less. sagacity than the former; they are much less docile, have considerable courage, are watchful and noisy, and therefore are chiefly intrasted with the care of cattle, the property of the farms and of the humbler classes, and thence are so greatly crossed by all kinds of races, that they are the chief parents of the mongrel dogs of the west. Beginning with those that appear to approximate most closely to the original type, we find the Turkmen Watch-dog. This is a large, rugged,
and fierce race, equalling the wolf in stature, shaped like the Irish greyhound, and with equally power- ful jaws; the ears are erect, the tail rather hairy, their colour a deep yellowish-red, and so like a Nato- han wolf, that a friend being present, in Asia Minor, at a wolf hunt, allowed one to pass out of a brake, because he mistook him for one of the Turkmen dogs, and his Greek guide called out Lyke! when it was too late to fire. There are among them a few white and black, evidently crossed-dogs from ano- ther origin. This race extends wherever the Turk- men, or Toorkee people reside, from central high Asia to the Bosphorus, and: is everywhere employed
THE SULIOT DOG. 151
to guard their tents and cattle. We believe it is
also in similar use among the Kurds; and, in a_ former article, it appeared, that in the mountains “north of the Mekran, and west of the Indus, dogs of this description were likewise the guardians of the peasantry.
THE BOAR-HOUND OF GERMANY,
Canis Suillus, GMELLIN.
PLATE VII.
Tur Suliot Dog is one of the largest breeds known, and is most likely the true Molossian of antiquity. It is fuller in the mouth, fierce, coarse in aspect, and rug- ged in fur. Wenever saw any that had not the ears cropped, and the tail rough, with straggling hair: they were tan coloured, with dark brown or blackish surfaces on the back, shoulders, and about the ears. In the last war between Austria and the Turks, the Moslem soldiers employed many to guard their outposts; and, in the course of the campaigns, a great many were captured by the Imperial forces, and secured by the officers as private property, or adopted by the corps as regimental pets. One of - . these was presented to the King of Naples, and was | reputed to be the largest dog in the world, being little less than four feet high at the shoulder. We saw one at Brussels, wiarahing at the head of the regiment of Clerfayt, and another belonging to that
152 THE DANISH DOG.
of Bender, both little inferior to Shetland ponies. Their cars were cropped, but the head more nearly resembled that of a large Danish dog than a mastiff; the hair was rugged whitish beneath, but buff, ru- fous, and black, from the eyes to the tail, much resembling the wolf in colour and hardness.
The watch-dogs of Hungary, eastern and southern Germany, partake of the above characters, but are of smaller size; the ears small, turned downwards, and villous. They were formerly used in boar- hunting, and are figured by Redinger under the name of Sau-ruden. Canis sullus of Gmellin.
THE DANISH DOG.
Canis glaucus, Nox.
{In western Russia, Denmark, and northern Ger- many, this variety of the great cur race is found ; it differs from the foregoing in being smoother, the forehead round, the ears short, partially drooping, and the colour, in general, a light slaty-blue, with some white about the mouth, breast, and limbs. Tt isa tall and very handsome dog, but, for want of -attention, is very often partially disfigured by cross- ings of more degraded races; yet, when we refer to
THE MATIN DOG. 153
the feral dog of St. Domingo, so nearly allied to the Dane in form, stature, and colour, and reflect, that originally it was imported by Spaniards from Europe, we may be justified in assuming, that the same race existed in Spain, and was first carried thither by the conquering Goths, or Suevi. In Sweden, the Danish dog was formerly used in couples to support a smaller breed of hounds, called Elk-finders, in the chace of that powerful animal, to retard it until the horse-
-men came up, or to drive it in the direction where the rifle-shots were posted. There is a good figure of this variety in Buffon’s quarto edition.
THE MATIN DOG.
Canis laniarius, LINN.
Tus race of the family was most likely imported in France by the Cymbers, or later, by the Franks. - Tt is a large species, equalling the former in stature, but the forehead is flatter, the nose more prolonged and pointed, the hair rugged, and the colour usually white, with one or more large clouds of brown; the ears, also, are more triangular, and the tips bent down ; showing, upon the whole, a certain intermixture of the older Gallic dog. It is fierce, but not remarkable for daring. From the
154 THE CATTLE-DOG OF CUBA.
Matin, Buffon, with more nationality than sound reasoning, would derive a great many subordinate breeds of dope in his ito genealogy of the canine family.
The Drover, or Cattle-dog of Cuba and Terra Firma, in America, we have seen in great num- bers, and they perform a service which those of their tribe in Europe are scarcely fit for. We have often witnessed, when vessels with live stock arrive in our West India colonies, and the oxen are hoisted out by a sling passed round the base of their horns, the great assistance they afford to bring them to land. For; when the ox first suspended by the head is lowered, and allowed to fall into the water, men generally swim and guide it by the horns; but, at other times, this service is performed by one or two dogs, who, catching the bewildered animal by the ears, one on each side, force it to swim in the direction of the landing place, and instantly release their hold when they feel it touches the ground ; for then the beast naturally walks up to the shore. These dogs have the form of the Dane, and the _ colours of a wolf, with a long truncated tail, and -| generally a black spot over each eye, covering their
small half pendulous ears; their eyes are small, very bright, and the hair is rugged. There are some equal to mastiffs in bulk and bone; but it is likely that they are a cross with the Cuba breed of that race. We regard this breed as the continuous do- mesticated animal, of which the feral of St. Domingo
THE CATTLE-DOG OF CUBA. 155
is the wild representative, and both as imported from Spain.
The old British slow-hound, and the primitive lurcher, we suspect once belonged to the present group, being gradually commuted into their subse- quent forms by repeated crossings with true hounds and greyhounds; the first into the Manchester and southern hound, and the second, so remarkable for Sagacity and attachment, deriving these qualities from the cur stock, whose head, hair, and uncouth form, it still preserves; but we do not now any | more employ it under the old English appellation of Teaser, which appears to be the legitimate modern term for Oppian’s Agasseus. Although the Celtic Agas denotes simply a dog, it may be observed, that the modern French verb agacer (to tease, to pro- voke), is neither of Latin or Frankish origin, and therefore, most likely, is derived from an original Gallic root. The meaning of the verb is perfectly applicable to this ancient lurcher, and to the large terriers still used in the German hunting packs, for the purpose of rousing or provoking the wild boar from his lair, and make him break cover. Redinger figured this ancient dog under the name of Sau- finder (sow-searcher) ; and our diminutive modern terrier, particularly the Scottish rough-haired breed, — is therefore the race we look upon as the most an- ; cient dog of Britain, though the opinion which || - would make it indigenous is very questionable. \ These lurcher-terriers, or agassei, were originally all, more or less, buff, or sandy coloured, with
156 THE CARRIER-DOG OF THE INDIANS,
rugged and coarse hair, pointed ears, hairy tail, short-legged, but of very high courage, grappling with any animal, bull, bear, wolf, or badger,