ck; drives cattle home from the field; keeps herds
and flocks within bounds, protects them from wild beasts; points out
to the sportsman the game; brings the birds that are shot to its
master; will turn a spit; at Brussels, and in Holland, draws little
carts to the herb-market; in more northern regions, draws sledges with
provisions, travellers, &c.; will find out what is dropped; watchful
by night, and when the charge of a house or garden is at such times
committed to him, his boldness increases, and he sometimes becomes
perfectly ferocious; when it has been guilty of a theft, slinks away
with its tail between its legs; eats voraciously, with oblique eyes;
enemy to beggars; attacks strangers without provocation; hates strange
dogs; howls at certain notes in music, and often urines on hearing
them; will snap at a stone thrown at it; is sick at the approach of
bad weather, (a remark vague and uncertain); is afflicted with worms;
spreads its madness; grows blind with age; _saepe gonorrhaea infectus_;
driven as unclean from the houses of the Mahometans; yet the same
people establish hospitals for, and allow them daily food.

The dog, says Buffon, like every other animal which produces above one
or two at a time, is not perfectly formed immediately after birth.
Dogs are always brought forth blind; the two eyelids are not simply
glued together, but shut up with a membrane, which is torn off, as
soon as the muscles of the upper eyelids acquire strength sufficient
to overcome this obstacle to vision, which generally happens the tenth
or twelfth day. At this period, the bones of the head are not
completed, the body and muzzle are bloated, and the whole figure is
ill defined; but in less than two months, they learn to use all their
senses; their growth is rapid, and they soon gain strength. In the
fourth month, they lose some of their teeth, which, as in other
animals, are soon replaced, and never again fall out: they have six
cutting and two canine teeth in each jaw, and fourteen grinders in the
upper, and twelve in the under, making in all forty-two teeth; but the
number of grinders sometimes varies in particular dogs.

The time of gestation is nine weeks, or sixty-three days; sometimes
sixty-two or sixty-one, but never less than sixty.

The bitch produces six, seven, and even so far as twelve puppies, and
generally has more at the subsequent litters than she has at the
first; but the observation of Buffon, that a female hou