Note 361 — CANES VENATICI. Class I.

Cuvier Regn. Animal.

It has been observed by an eminent living naturalist, that the cerebral capacity of the bull-dog is sensibly smaller than of any other race: and it is doubtless to the decrease of the encephalon that we must attribute his inferiority to all others, in every thing relating to intelligence. He is scarcely capable of any education, and is fitted for nothing but ferocious combat. In the ancient translation of Caius’s libellus by Holinshed, this savage brute is sketched to the life, as “an huge dogge stubborne, ougly, eagre, burthenous of body (and therefore but of little swiftnesse,) terrible and feareful to behold, and more fearse and fell then any Archadien curre.” Nor is our estimate of his might in conflict weakened by Raphael’s statement thatDescription of Britaine. B. iii. c. 13. “alone and wythout anye help at al, he pulled downe first an huge beare, then a parde, and last of al a lyon, each after other, before the Frenche King in one day.”