Now we are upon the subject of dogs it may not be impertinent to
add, that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt
partridges and pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much
delight and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones when offered
as food; nor will a mongrel dog of my own, though he is
remarkable for ending that sort of game. But, when we came to
offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they
devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter clean.

No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and
trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and
transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from
them with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.

Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as
they are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and
do not care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for,
since the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should
be eaten. Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls,
nor indeed the bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the
foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage: and indeed
there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this
circumstance of dislike; for vultures,* and kites, and ravens, and
crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with dogs** over their
carrion; and seem to be appointed by nature as fellow-scavengers
to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.
(* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs
and vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as
to bring up their young together in the same place.)
(** The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like