"OUIDA" AND HER DOGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 956, 16 May 1889, Page 32

"OUIDA" AND HER DOGS.

My Newfoundland Sulla was the most perfectly sweet tempered of all created creatures, yet once be saw a man hurling a pewter pot at a woman, and once he saw a man beating a little child 5 on each occasion he sprang on the man and knocked him down. Sulla was a most daring swimmer, and never so happy as when in the sea ; yet one day, when unseen by me the tide was coming in and surrounding me, the dog, by his violent barking and frantic efforts to push me from the road £ was pursuing, saved me from what in all likelihood would have been death, .The sea was no danger to him, but in some way or another he knew that it was a great danger to tne. It would be absurd to call this instinct ; it was the highest kind of reasoning power — it was reasoning against instinct. ' THE CHARITABLE ISLA.

ULy St. Bernard Isla had a friend in a dog that lived at acafe> he met the .e^fe dog in 1 his walks and took him with him, but for more than a year his friendship never went bo far as to invite the cafe Jog, which was a pointer, into the house. One day, to my surprise, he came from his walk, bringing the pointer, whose name was Antonio,' in with him, pugfaed his nose on to my breakfast table, and taade me understand that he wished me to feed his friend. On inquiry I found that the pointer was starving, having been a day or two before beaten and kicked out of the cafe for breaking some flower-pots. It is certain that Isla must haveknown of his distress, for from, that moment he made Antonio at home in his own house.

A WONDERFUL LITTLE MALTESE TEBRIER.

• I have a little Maltese called Lili, who knows by a glance at the kind of dress I wear what I am going to do, and is joyful or sorrowful accordingly. This little dog is a very Harpagon about his property, and hoarded biscuits, balls, bones, &c, are let beau® yeua de ta cassette. On day in &n hotel by the sea he was given a wing of a partridge when he was not hungry. Some ppen newspapers lay on a couch..; he jumped up, put the partridge. into a newspaper, with paws arid nose crumpled the newspaper into a parcel, and pushed the whole under a Cushion. • He then went out for a walk, was .absent 'several hours on the seashore. Returning home he ' darted to the "6ofa, undid his parcel, and ate the partridge wing. Occasionally his treasures in his absence are found by one of the big dogs and gobbled up. On entering the room Lili invariably picks out the right offender, however innocent the guilty one may try to look, and pounces on him in fiercest wrath, foi' Jjili (the size o£ a rabbit) would not hesitate for a moment about fighting a Hon. THE INTBNSB HUMANENESS OF THE J>O£. I wjsh that men and women would only obseryetheir dogs ; the> would note countless little traits to these I cite, and would learn to 'feel the intense humaneness of the dog and to sympathise with' him,' whioh, !ev^n those who like dogs hardly ever do now. Any one .who has studied the brain of, the dog, not by. means of the scalpel and the hot iron

in the torture trough of laboratories, but by observations of its workings in a free and natural life under' the healthful laws qi Nature, will be inclined to f paraphrase Mil- : ton's sentence and say, " As well kill a man as kill a good dog." "My dog must do what I like," said the man ;, he forgets that to keep it healthy the dog must, sometimes at any rate, do what the dog likes.