120 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE.

Naturalist’s Library ”:—“My St. Bemard was brought home
direct from the Great St. Bernard, when he was a puppy
of about four or five months. His bark is tremendous;
so loud, indeed, that I have often distinguished it nearly
a mile off. He had been missing for some time, when,
to my great joy, one of the letter-carriers brought him back ;
and the man’s account was, that in going along a certain
street, he heard his bark from the inside of a yard, and
knew it immediately. He knocked at the gate, and said to
the owner of the premises, ‘You have got Sir Thomas
Lauder’s big dog.’ The man denied it. ‘But I know you
have,’ continued the letter-carrier; ‘I can swear that I heard
the bark of Sir Thomas’s big dog; for there is no dog in or
about all Edinburgh that has such a bark.’ At last, with
great reluctance, the man gave up the dog to the letter-carrier,
who brought him home here. But though Bass’s bark is so
terrific, he is the best-natured and most playful dog I ever
saw; so much so, indeed, that the small King Charles’s
spaniel, Raith, used to tyrannize over him for many months
after he came here from abroad. I have seen the little
creature run furiously at the great animal when gnawing a
bone, who instantly turned himself submissively over on his
back, with all his legs in the air, whilst Raith, seizing the
bone, would make the most absurd and unavailing attempts
to bestride the enormous head of his subdued companion,
with the most ludicrous affectation of the terrible growling,
that might bespeak the loftiest description of dog-indignation.
When a dog attacks Bass in the street or road, he runs away
rather than quarrel; but when compelled to fight by any
perseverance in the attacking party, he throws his enemy
down in a moment, and then, without biting him, he lays his
whole immense bulk down upon him, till he nearly smothers
him. He took a particular fancy for one of the postmen who
deliver letters here, whose duty it was, besides delivering
letters, to carry a letter bag from one receiving-house to