The Greenland dogs are mostly white, though some few are black, and have very thick coats; they employ them for drawing their sledges, by putting four or six of them together; they also eat their flesh, and make clothes of their skins. The Kamtschatka dogs are also either black or white, and are used for drawing sledges; they are suffered to run at large during the summer, and in winter they are fed with a sort of paste made with fish. These dogs of Greenland and Kamtschatka, as well as the Russian dogs just mentioned, have a strong resemblance to the Iceland dogs, and are most probably of the same race.
Notwithstanding the varieties I have described, there are still others remaining, which I have not been able to procure; I have myself seen two individuals of a wild race, but could not get a sufficient opportunity even to describe them. M. Aubry, curate of St. Louis, informed us that a few years since he saw a dog about the size of a spaniel, with long hair and a very large beard on his chin. Louis XIV. had some of these dogs sent to him by M. le Comte de Toulouse; and Comte de Lassai had some of the same breed, but there is not any of them to be found at present.
I have little to add with respect to the wild dogs, of which there are different races, to what is contained in my original work; and the following account of the wild dog found near the Cape of Good Hope, I had from M. le Vicomte de Querhoënt; he says, there are a great number of packs of wild dogs at the Cape; their skins are spotted with various colours, and some of them are very large; their ears are erect, they run extremely fast, and have no constant place of abode. They kill the deer in great numbers, are seldom destroyed themselves, and are very difficult to be caught in snares, from carefully avoiding every thing that has been touched by man. Several of their young have been taken in the woods, and some of those it has been attempted to render domestic, but they grow up so large and so ferocious that the attempt has been given up as in vain.
END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.
T. Gillet, Printer, Wild-Court.
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