[Chapter V — The Good Qualities of the Dog — The Sense of Smell — Intelligence — Moral Qualities — Dog Carts — Cropping — Tailing — Breaking-In — Dog-Pits — Dog-Stealing]
In our history of the different breeds of the dog we have seen enough to induce us to admire and love him. His courage, his fidelity, and the degree in which he often devotes every power that he possesses to our service, are circumstances that we can never forget nor overlook. His very foibles occasionally attach him to us. We may select a pointer for the pureness of his blood and the perfection of his education. He transgresses in the field. We call him to us; we scold him well; perchance, we chastise him. He lies motionless and dumb at our feet. The punishment being over, he gets up, and, by some significant gesture, acknowledges his consciousness of deserving what he has suffered. The writer operated on a pointer bitch for an enlarged cancerous tumour, accompanied by much inflammation and pain in the surrounding parts. A word or two of kindness and of caution were all that were necessary, although, in order to prevent accidents, she had been bound securely. The flesh quivered as the knife pursued its course — a moan or two escaped her, but yet she did not struggle; and her first act, after all was over, was to lick the operator's hand.
From the combination of various causes, the history of no animal is more interesting than that of the dog. First, his intimate association with man, not only as a valuable protector, but as a constant and faithful companion throughout all the vicissitudes of life. Secondly, from his natural endowments, not consisting in the exquisite delicacy of one individual sense — not merely combining memory with reflection — but possessing qualities of the mind that stagger us in the contemplation of them, and which we can alone account for in the gradation existing in that wonderful system which, by different links of one vast chain, extends from the first to the last of all things, until it forms a perfect whole on the wonderful confines of the spiritual and material world.
We here quote the beautiful account of Sir Walter Scott and his dogs, as described by Henry Hallam:
"But looking towards the grassy mound
Where calm the Douglass chieftains lie,
Who, living, quiet never found,
I straightway learnt a lesson high;
For there an old man sat serene,
And well I knew that thoughtful mien
Of him whose early lyre had thrown
O'er mouldering walls the magic of its tone.
It was a comfort, too, to see
Those dogs that from him ne'er would rove,
And always eyed him reverently,
With glances of depending love.
They know not of the eminence
Which marks him to my reasoning sense,
They know but that he is a man,
And still to them is kind, and glads them all he can
And hence their quiet looks confiding;
Hence grateful instincts seated deep
By whose strong bond, were ill betiding,
They'd lose their own, his life to keep.
What joy to watch in lower creature
Such dawning of a moral nature,
And how (the rule all things obey)
They look to a higher mind to be their law and stay!"
The subject of the intellectual and moral qualities of the inferior animals is one highly interesting and somewhat misunderstood — urged perhaps to a ridiculous extent by some persons, yet altogether neglected by others who have no feeling for any but themselves.
have compared the relative bulk of the brain in different animals, and the result is not a little interesting. In man the weight of the brain amounts on the average to 1-30th part of the body. In the Newfoundland dog it does not amount to 1-60th part, or to 1-100th part in the poodle and barbet, and not to more than 1-300th part in the ferocious and stupid bull-dog.