fince that time I have generally taken care to see them well supplied with it. They account green corn a delicacy, both blade and stalk, but the ear they feldom eat: ftraw of any kind, especially wheat-ftraw, is another of their dainties; they will feed greedily upon oats, but if furnished with clean ftraw never want them; it ferves them also for a bed, and, if fhaken up daily, will be kept sweet and dry for a confiderable time. They do not indeed require aromatic herbs, but will eat a small quantity of them with great relish, and are particularly fond of the plant called musk; they seem to resemble sheep in this, that, if their pasture be too fucculent, they are very subject to the rot; to prevent which, I always made bread their principal nourishment, and filling a pan with it cut into fmall fquares, placed it every evening in their chambers, for they feed only at evening and in the night: during the winter, when vegetables were not to be got, I mingled this mess of bread with shreds of carrot, adding to it the rind of apples cut extremely thin; for, though they are fond of the paring, the apple itself difgufts them. These however not being a sufficient substitute for the juice of fummer herbs, they must at this time be supplied with water; but fo placed that they cannot overset it into their beds. I muft not omit that occafionally they are much pleased with twigs of hawthorn, and of the common briar, eating even the very wood when it is of confiderable thickness.

Befs, I have faid, died young; Tiney lived to be nine years old, and died at laft, I have reason to think, of fome hurt in B b

VOL. II.

his loins by a fall; Pufs is ftill living, and has just completed his tenth year, difcovering no figns of decay, nor even of age, except that he is grown more difcreet and less frolickfome than he was. I cannot conclude without observing, that I have lately introduced a dog to his acquaintance, a spaniel that had never seen a hare to a hare that had never seen a fpaniel. I did it with great caution, but there was no real need of it. Pufs difcovered no token of fear, nor Marquis the leaft symptom of hoftility. There is therefore, it should feem, no natural antipathy between dog and hare, but the pursuit of the one occafions the flight of the other, and the dog purfues because he is trained to it: they eat bread at the fame time out of the fame hand, and are in all respects fociable and friendly.

I should not do complete juftice to my subject did I not add, that they have no ill scent belonging to them; that they are indefatigably nice in keeping themselves clean, for which purpose nature has furnished them with a brush under each foot; and that they are never infefted by any vermin.

MAY 28, 1784.

Memorandum found among Mr. Cowper's papers.

Tuesday, March 9, 1786.

This day died poor Pufs, aged eleven years eleven months. She died between twelve and one at noon, of mere old age, and apparently without pain.

THE END.

T. Benfley, Printer, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London.