the crowded population of many a town is indebted for exemption from plague in its most fearful forms. The European, who has severe laws for keeping his cities clean, cannot endure the sight of the lean and hungry dogs which swarm in the streets of Turkish cities, and long for the rising of a Mohammedan sect to create a body of dog-hating police. But the people of these places may well endure the nocturnal yells and fierce battles which disturb their rest, in consideration of the benefits derived from the dogs, which, without fee or commission, keep the streets free from airtainting garbage. These lazy people might no doubt become scavengers themselves, and keep their towns clean under the superintendence of a committee of sewerage; but the Turk has no such notion, and the very idea is an abomination which he leaves to the Frankish infidel. The dogs, then, for the present must be left to discharge their office according to the best of their judgment. In such places it is curious to see how groups of these animals appropriate to themselves certain streets, into which the canine tenants of the next dare not make an entry, except under the penalty of a most summary ejectment, with damages. Each district of a city is thus parcelled out amongst a host of quadrupeds, which act their parts of town-cleaners with an eagerness proportioned to their hunger.

But let us now behold the dog in the capacity of a draughtanimal, discharging in the savage deserts of the Esquimaux countries the work executed by the reindeer in Lapland, and the horse in Europe. Captain Parry thus describes the works of the dog amongst the rude tribes of the North, whose long winter and snow-paved roads put upon the most faithful quadrupeds the task which the police-rules of the British metropolis prohibit in the civilised Englishmen :

"When drawing a sledge, the dogs have a simple harness of deer or seal skin, going round the neck by one bight, and another for each of the forelegs, with a single thong leading over the back, and attached to a sledge as a trace. Though they appear, at first, to be huddled together without regard to regularity, there is, in fact, considerable attention paid to the arrangement, particularly in the selection of a dog of peculiar spirit and sagacity as leader, and to whom, in turning to the right or left, the driver addresses himself. This choice is made without regard to age or sex; and the rest of the dogs take precedency according to their training or sagacity, the least effective being put nearest the sledge. The leader is usually from eighteen to twenty feet from the forepart of the sledge, and the hindermost dog about half that distance, so that when ten or twelve are running together, several are nearly abreast of each other. The driver sits quite low, on the forepart of the sledge, with his feet overhanging the snow on one side, and having in his hand a whip, of which the handle, made either of wood, bone, or whalebone, is eighteen

inches, and the lash more than as many feet, in length; the part of the thong next the handle is plaited a little way down to stiffen it, and give it a spring, on which much of its use depends; and that which composes the lash is chewed by the women, to make it flexible in frosty weather. The men acquire from their youth considerable expertness in the use of the whip, the lash of which is left to trail along the ground by the side of the sledge, and with which they can inflict a very severe blow on any dog at pleasure. Though the dogs are kept in training entirely by fear of the whip—and, indeed, without it, would soon have their own way-its immediate effect is always detrimental to the draught of the sledge; for not only does the individual that is struck draw back and slacken his trace, but generally turns upon his next neighbour, and this passing on to the next, occasions a general divergence, accompanied by the usual yelping and shewing of the teeth. The dogs then come together again by degrees, and the draught of the sledge is accelerated; but even at the best of times, by this rude mode of draught, the traces of the dogs form an angle of thirty or forty degrees on each side of the direction in which the sledge is advancing. " Another great inconvenience attending the Esquimaux method of putting the dogs to, beside that of not employing their strength to the best advantage, is, the constant entanglement of the traces, the dogs repeatedly doubling under from side to side to avoid the whip; so that, after running a few miles, the traces always require to be taken off and cleaned.

"In directing the sledge, the whip acts no very essential part; the driver for this purpose using certain words, as the carters do with us, to make the dogs turn more to the right or left. To these a good leader attends with admirable precision, especially if his own name be repeated at the same time, looking behind over his shoulder with great earnestness, as if listening to the directions of the driver. On a beaten track, or even where a single foot or sledge mark is occasionally discernible, there is not the slightest trouble in guiding the dogs; for even in the darkest night, and in the heaviest snow-drift, there is little or no danger of their losing their road, the leader keeping his nose near the ground, and directing the rest with wonderful sagacity. Where, however, there is no beaten track, the best driver among them makes a terrible circuitous course, as all the Esquimaux roads plainly shew; these generally occupying an extent of six miles, when, with a horse and sledge, the journey would scarcely have amounted to five. On rough ground, as among hummocks of ice, the sledge would be frequently overturned, or altogether stopped, if the driver did not repeatedly get off, and by lifting or drawing it to one side, steer clear of those accidents. At all times, indeed, except on a smooth and well-made road, he is pretty constantly employed thus with his feet, which, together with his never-ceasing vociferations and frequent use of the whip, renders

the driving of one of these vehicles by no means a pleasant or easy task. When the driver wishes to stop the sledge, he calls out Wo, woo,' exactly as our carters do; but the attention paid to this command depends altogether on his ability to enforce it. If the weight is small, and the journey homeward, the dogs are not to be thus delayed; the driver is therefore obliged to dig his heels into the snow to obstruct their progress; and having thus succeeded in stopping them, he stands up with one leg before the foremost cross-piece of the sledge, till, by means of laying the whip gently over each dog's head, he has made them all lie down. He then takes care not to quit his position; so that should the dogs set off, he is thrown upon the sledge, instead of being left behind by them.

،، The rate at which they travel depends, of course, on the weight they have to draw, and the road on which their journey is performed. When the latter is level, and very hard and smooth, constituting what, in other parts of North America, is called ‘good sleighing,' six or seven dogs will draw from eight to ten hundred weight, at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour, for several hours together: and will easily, under these circumstances, perform a journey of fifty or sixty miles. On untrodden snow, five-and-twenty or thirty miles would be a good day's journey. The same number of well-fed dogs, with a weight of only five or six hundred pounds, are almost unmanageable, and will, on a smooth road, run any way they please, at the rate of ten miles an hour."

These dogs render other important services to their owners by aiding them in the chase; and thus providing these scattered tribes not only with the means of travelling, but of subsistence. Little do we think, when trusting the safety of our house at night to the care of some English Hector or Carlo, of the perils from which a party of sturdy E-quimaux dogs may be at that very hour rescuing a family of Indians by dragging them across some frozen sea, before the ice breaks up with a noise like subterranean thunder. A different spectacle is seen when we turn to a solitary convent, perched on the summit of the Swiss Alps, whence the far-famed St. Bernard's dogs issue mid the snow-tempest in search of the traveller blinded in some pass by the frozen shower. The Pass of the Great St. Bernard has been used by travellers between Switzerland and Italy for many ages; and even in the time of the Romans, a temple dedicated to Jove stood near the site of the present monastery, which appears to have offered a refuge to passengers since the tenth century. The dogs which have made this convent famous are of the spaniel kind; powerful, and able to bear the fatigues to which their singular life subjects them. Keenness of smell, joined to a peculiar sagacity produced by their long training to the work of mercy, enables these dogs to detect the presence of human beings beneath deep heaps of snow, which conceal from

man's eye the buried wanderer. The instant they scent a traveller in the snow, a deep bark is set up, which, echoing down the ravines, calls on all around for help; the animals do not, however, content themselves with sounding the alarm, but begin the work of deliverance by tearing up the snow with irrepressible energy. The monks soon arrive, and a large party of buried men often owe their lives to the dogs of St. Bernard. Not many years ago, the traveller in this Alpine pass might have seen one of the convent dogs wearing a medal, and regarded with great affection by all. Well had this noble creature earned his honours; more worthily than many a bearer of orders of nobility amongst men; for this dog had, one stormy day, rescued twenty-two persons from a snowy grave by his courage and skill. Pity that this very animal should afterwards meet the fate from which he had rescued others. In the year 1816, an Italian courier was on his route homewards, in a dangerous time of the year, attended by two guides from the monks, each furnished with a dog, one being the hero of the medal; when suddenly huge mass of snow slid from a mountain, the avalanche descended, and all were lost. The ancient St. Bernard's breed is said to have become extinct by a disease in 1820; when the present race was introduced, to preserve the fame won in past ages by their predecessors.

The skill often displayed by our shepherd's dog in discovering flocks of sheep when buried by a snow-drift on some wild northern moor, presents qualities somewhat resembling those of the Alpine spaniel. Many a wondrous tale is recorded of their exploits amongst the Scottish hills, and the bleak uplands of Cumberland, for which it is impossible to find room, though many of the details are quite as marvellous as those which have spread the fame of the St. Bernard dog through Europe. We must not confound the drover's dog, seen in our roads and lanes, with the true shepherd's dog; for though of the same species, they are very different in manners and habits. The drover's dog has none of the opportunities for training his talents which are given to the dog of the shepherd, who, on lonely moor and hill-side, is dependent on the intelligence of his only associate for the safety of a large flock of sheep. The shepherd therefore makes the dog his friend, whilst the drover too often treats him as a slave; the animals soon shew the results of such a treatment, in the opposite nature of their tempers, and the different degrees of their intelligence.

The Newfoundland, the bull-dog, and the mastiff, might occupy us some time in describing their peculiar qualities; but such an attempt is not necessary for the majority of our readers. The firstmentioned has long been a favourite for his gallantry in rescuing drowning persons, and for the generosity of his general character. It is perhaps hardly necessary to tell the reader, that the animal called by us the Newfoundland dog differs in many particulars from the original breed. The true species found in the island

from which the name is given, is much smaller than our variety, and is usually of a dark or even black colour; possessing also a robust and compact frame. In fact, were the original and derived varieties placed side by side, few persons would suppose them to be of the same kind. We must not forget, however, that two varieties of dog are found in Newfoundland, one of which is a large and powerful animal; but this is not reckoned in the original stock. The peculiar adaptation of the Newfoundland dog for swimming, consists in the structure of the webbed foot, which acts as a paddle in the water, in the same manner as the foot of the duck and other water-fowl. The bull-dog has, since the disuse of bull-baiting, become scarce in England, though specimens of this indomitable and ferocious animal are yet met with amongst the dog-fanciers. This variety is not ranked with the more intelligent dogs; for though the head is, on the whole, larger than that of the shepherd's dog, the capacity of the cranium (or the brain part) is inferior; a fact which the phrenological reader will be delighted to ponder over. The tenacity of this animal in holding to the object of his attack is almost incredible; and cases have occurred in which this dog has been beaten with iron bars and stabbed with knives to make him loose his hold, but in vain. This determined courage is not sufficiently available among civilised men to repay the cultivation of the breed; hence this prodigy of valour is now little esteemed, except by those classes in whose estimation brute ferocity will ever rank higher than intelligent courage.

The mastiff may be somewhat more useful than the bull-dog, but his services are in general superseded by other equally watchful but less dangerous dogs. The mastiff was highly prized in ancient Rome,' where its fierce courage induced many to train the animal to contend with lions, and other powerful beasts, in the amphitheatre. So highly was the breed esteemed, that a special officer was appointed to select the best that Britain could furnish, and transmit them to Rome, where the degraded nobles and emperors of a corrupt capital relieved the monotony of their contemptible lives by the excitement of contests between lions and mastiffs. Such fights were not, however, peculiar to Rome; for our annalist Stow describes a battle between a lion and three mastiffs, which ended rather unfortunately for the latter; two being mortally wounded, whilst the lion himself was so torn that he attempted to retreat.

Our remarks on the domesticated dog are now concluded; and we must proceed to notice a few particulars in those animals which belong to the same family, and resemble, in many things, the wild varieties of the dog itself.

Some stoutly assert it was the bull-dog.