ing of a fort was imitated by dogs, attended by the feigned destruction of some of the party; and we have witnessed the performance of many tricks by these animals, such as the solution of arithmetical questions, and the selection of certain cards, from a pack spread out, to denote the hour of a watch. A dog has also been taught to carry a glass of wine on a salver without spilling it. The account of a dog that was taught to imitate the sounds of the human voice, should not be omitted here. It belonged to a peasant; was of the most ordinary kind, and of middling size. A young child having heard it utter some sounds, which he thought resembled German words, took a fancy to teach it to speak. The master having nothing better to do, spared neither time nor trouble; and, happily, the pupil had dispositions difficult to be found in another. length, after some years, the dog could pronounce about thirty words, among which were tea, coffee, assembly, adopted from the French into the German language. Its tuition commenced when it was three years old. Certainly this is a very astonishing fact. At THE DOGS OF ST. BERNARD. THE Hospice of the Great St. Bernard is situated near the top of the mountain known by that name, near one of the most dangerous passsages of the Alps, between Switzerland and Savoy. In these regions the traveller is often overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying trees and crags of rock before them. The hospitable religious, though their revenue is scanty, open their doors to every stranger that presents himself. To be cold, to be weary, to be benighted, constitute the title to their comfortable shelter, their cheering meal, and their agreeable converse. But their attention to the dis tressed does not end here. They devote themselves to the dangerous task of searching for those unhappy persons who may have been overtaken by the sudden storm, and would perish but for their charitable succor. Most remarkably are they assisted in these truly Christian offices. They have a breed of noble dogs in their establishment, whose extraordinary sagacity often enables them to rescue the traveller from destruction. Benumbed with cold, weary in the search for a lost track, his senses yielding to the stupifying influence of frost, which betrays the exhausted sufferer into a deep sleep, the unhappy man sinks upon the ground, and the snow-drift covers him from human sight. It is then that the keen scent and the exquisite docility of these admirable dogs are called into action. Though the perishing man lie ten or even twenty feet beneath the snow, the delicacy of smell with which they can trace him offers a chance of escape. They scratch away the snow with their feet; they set up a continued hoarse and solemn bark, which brings the religious and laborers of the hospice to their assistance. To provide for the chance that the dogs, without human help, may succeed in discovering the unfortunate traveller, one of them has a flask of spirits round his neck, to which the fainting man may apply for support; and another has a cloak to cover him. These wonderful exertions are often successful; and even where they fail of restoring him who has perished, the dogs discover the body, so that it may be secured for the recognition of friends; and such is the effect of the temperature, that the dead features generally preserve their firmness for two years. One of these noble creatures was decorated with a medal, in commemoration of his having saved the lives of twenty-two persons, who, but for his sagacity, must have perished. Many travellers who have crossed the passage of St. Bernard, since the peace, have seen this dog, and have heard round the blazing fire of the religious, the story of his extraordinary career. He died about the year 1816, in an attempt to convey a poor traveller to his anxious family. The Piedmontese courier arrived at St. Bernard in a very stormy season, laboring to make his way to the little village of St. Pierre, in the valley beneath the mountain, where his wife and children dwelt. It was in vain that the religious attempted to check his resolution to reach his family. They at last gave him two guides, each of whom was accompanied by a dog, of which one was the remarkable creature whose services had been so valuable to mankind. Descending from the hospice, they were in an instant overwhelmed by two avalanches; and the same common destruction awaited the family of the poor courier, who were toiling up the mountain in the hope to obtain some news of their expected friend. They all perished. A story is told of one of these dogs, who, having found a child unhurt whose mother had been destroyed by an avalanche, induced the poor boy to mount his back, and thus carried him to the gate of the hospice. THE LOST NESTLINGS. "Have you seen my darling nestlings ?" "I cannot, cannot find them, Though I've sought them far and wide: “I left them well this morning, "Oh, have you nought to tell me, That I left within the nest? "I have called them in the bushes, "I can tell you all about them," 66 But I did not think their mother With a wailing sound, like this. "I did not know your bosom And to mourn your murdered children, "I'm sorry that I've taken "I ever shall remember The plaintive sounds I've heard THE ARABIAN CAMEL. OVER the arid and thirsty deserts of Asia and Africa, the camel affords to man the only means of intercourse between one country and another. The camel has been created with an especial adaptation to the regions wherein it has contributed to the comfort, and even to the very existence, of man, from the earliest ages. It is constituted to endure the severest hardships with little physical inconvenience. Its feet are formed to tread lightly upon a dry and shifting soil; its nostrils have the capacity of closing, so as to shut out the driving sand, when the whirlwind scatters it over the desert; it is provided with a peculiar apparatus for retaining water in its stomach, so that it can march from well to well without great inconvenience, although they be several hundred miles apart. When a company of eastern merchants cross from Aleppo to Bassora, over a plain of sand which offers no refreshment to the exhausted senses, the whole journey being about eight hundred miles, the camel of the heavy caravan moves cheerfully along, with a burden of six or seven hundred weight, at the rate of twenty miles a day; while those of greater speed, that carry a man, without much other load, go forward at double that pace and daily distance. Patient under his duties, he kneels down at the command of his driver, and rises up cheerfully with his load; he requires no whip or spur during his monotonous march; but, like many other animals, he feels an evident pleasure in musical sounds; and therefore, when fatigue comes upon him, the driver sings some cheering snatch of his Arabian melodies, and the delighted creature toils forward with a brisker step, till the hour of rest arrives, when he again kneels down, to have his load removed for a little while; and if the stock of food be not exhausted, he is further rewarded with a few mouthfuls of the cake of barley, which he carries for the sustenance of his master and himself. Under a burning sun, upon an arid soil, enduring great fatigue, sometimes entirely without food for days, and seldom completely slaking his thirst more than once during a progress of several hundred miles, the camel is patient, and apparently happy. He ordinarily lives to a great age, and is seldom visited by any disease. Camels are of two species. That with one hump, is the Arabian camel, and is usually called the dromedary. The species with two humps is the Bactrian camel. Asiatics and Africans distinguish as dromedaries, those camels which are used for riding. The baggage camel may be compared to the dray-horse; the dromedary to the hunter, and in some instances to the race-horse. Messengers on dromedaries according to Burckhardt, have gone from Daraou to Berber in eight days, while he was twenty-two days with the caravan on the same journey. The The training of the camels to bear burdens, in the countries of the East, has not been minutely described by any traveller. M. Brue, who, at the latter part of the seventeenth century, had the management of the affairs of a French commercial company at Senegal, says, 66 soon after a camel is born, the Moors tie his feet under his stomach, and having thrown a large cloth over his back, put heavy stones at each corner of the cloth, which rests on the ground. They in this manner accustom him to receive the heaviest loads." Both ancient and modern authors agree tolerably well |