The dog of lower Egypt has most likely existed, as we now find him, for many centuries. Lucan, in his Pharsalia,' says:"The body, whether rent, or borne away,

By foul Egyptian dogs, and birds of prey."

They would probably eat the dead had they the opportunity, as the village dogs near the Ganges and its affluents do in Hindostan. From poverty, or economy, the Hindoo, instead of burning, often throws the corpse into the sacred stream with a couple of chatties tied to the neck. When the string gives way the body is carried down the flood till it grounds in some eddy, where it is speedily scented by the vulture, adjutant, crow, jackal, or Pariah dog.

Byron's lines are very truly descriptive of the scene that follows:

"He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall

Hold o'er the dead their carnival,

Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;

And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull,

As it slipp'd through their jaws, when their edge grew dull,

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;
So well had they broken a lingering fast

With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

The Siege of Corinth.

The condition of the dog is often wretched in many parts of the East. Porter says that those of Bagdad are miserably off. In some cities, however, the most charitable of "the faithful" have founded refuges for them and other animals, in Egypt, Turkey, and India.

Mahomet permitted dogs for the chase; and the flesh of

animals, captured by them in that manner, to be eaten, provided the name of God was uttered in slipping them, and if they had not devoured any portion. According to his law, animals are responsible in a future state; and one sect of Mussulmen believes that dogs will give evidence in another world against men. The prejudice in the East against dogs arises principally from their acting as scavengers and eating offal but the feeling does not extend to foreign dogs, or those of different life. The Sháfe'ees hold themselves polluted by the touch of his nose, if wet; but others are only careful to prevent his licking them, or defiling them in a worse

:

manner.

Lane informs us that the inhabitants of Egypt were humane to dumb animals, but their intercourse with Europeans has not rendered them more so; on the contrary, the conduct of many Christians has greatly conduced to the opposite effect, "For," says that most learned and accurate authority, "I do not remember to have seen acts of cruelty to dumb animals, except in places where Franks either reside or are frequent visitors-as Alexandria, Cairo, and Thebes. I now frequently see the houseless dogs beaten in the streets of Cairo, and that when quite inoffensive and quiet. I still observe men feeding them with bread, &c., and the persons who do so are mostly poor men. In every district of this city are many small troughs, which are daily replenished with water for the dogs. The shopkeepers paying each a trifle monthly for the purpose."

Many drinking fountains have now been placed in London, but in numerous instances for man only, though it would, in most of them, have been very easy to have had a space below where at least dogs, if not the over-driven and gasping sheep

and cattle, goaded by the savage drover on their way to the slaughter-house, might have slaked their last thirst.

Lane also tells us that dogs are eaten by many Maghrabees, or Western Arabs, settled at Alexandria, and by the few in Cairo. If the dog, where he is ownerless and pressed by necessity, eats man, man, on the other hand feeds on the dog in many places without that excuse. In addition to the Sandwich Islands, the dog is made an article of food at Otaheite, in China, on the Niger, in Guinea, Congo, the centre of Africa, Guiana, the West Indies, Mexico, and by gipsies in England. Sir W. Hamilton stated, in 1789, that dogs were eaten in Sicily, at Casalnuovo; so also said Swinburne. The Romans ate the dog, and so, according to Hippocrates, did the Greeks. Captain Carver relates he saw the Naudowessie Indians, in North America, eat dogs in 1766-8, for luxury, not necessity. The Esquimaux consider the dog as very dainty food. American and Asiatic savages sacrifice dogs. When the Koreki dread any infection, they kill a dog, wind the intestines round two poles, and pass between them. E. Ysbrant Ides tells of a Tungusian people, on the Schilka River, whose most solemn oath was killing a dog and drinking his blood. Europeans, in the selfish hope of escaping the natural penalty of their own vices or those of their foregoers, sometimes dissect the dog alive! Such deeds have been perpetrated by "a race of men who have practised tortures without pity, and published them without shame, and who, nevertheless, are still suffered to erect their heads among human beings." The outraged name of Science is the cloak thrown by these men over their actions, but the fair form of Truth ever shrinks with abhorrence from the polluting contact of such sanguinary and remorseless hands.

CHAPTER XXVI.

N English officer who was engaged in our rash expedition against Buenos Ayres, in 1806, says, when describing the country about one hundred miles north-west of that city.1

"Vast crowds of green plover making a great noise flew around us, and large bodies of wild dogs, who live and breed in holes, were visible, in quest of water and food. Lieutenant Balingall, by the power of imitating, decoyed two pups from their recess, which were afterwards domesticated with great difficulty. They were long very shy, but proved in the end very faithful housedogs. Their hair is harder and thicker than the tame sort. They subsist upon their fellows of the plain, and tend much to diminish the general stock of cattle. I often noticed their preference to the calves, which they attack in bodies of about twenty-guarded by the mother, the battle is sometimes furious and long-contested, but in almost all of them, natural affection is compelled to yield to a sense of self-preservation. Happily for the human race, they are cowardly by nature, for a shrill whistle will put thousands to flight, although above the ordinary size of the canine species."

'Gleanings and Remarks: collected during many months' residence at Buenos Ayres, &c. By Major Alexander Gillespie. 1819.

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Cruelty to brutes seems a striking characteristic of the lower orders, and the very methods used in slaughtering them tend much to render it an habitual stain. At every country house, bands of dogs are kept, to consume the carrion, to intimidate the wandering ladrones, as well as to repel the midnight assaults of their less civilised brethren, who visit the estancias in their roam, but their hostilities are always confined to bullying and barking. So prolific are they in this state of nature, that if they were not occasionally destroyed, they would overrun the land. To check their increase, which could not be effected by the tamer branches of the species, parties are formed twice a year from the adjacent country, all of whom are mounted and armed with their cuchillos, or knives. After compelling the dogs to brush from their holes by fumigation, they close them and pursue the refugees, butchering them in numbers. It is a stigma that on those occasions one unhappy victim is flayed alive, and so set free, which is imagined by those executioners, to make an impression upon the rest.”

One proprietor near the Parana, out of 60,000 head of cattle on his estate, estimated his annual loss in calves, lambs, and young colts, at 2000, by the rapacity of the wild dogs.

Their courage, where man is not their enemy, would appear to be considerable, for, writes Major Gillespie, "Near the village, some dogs killed two lions while we remained, of a darkish brown colour, their limbs strong, and with their heads neither shagged nor broad."

This must be the Puma, a far more active and formidable