essential service in their agricultural pursuits,
by keeping the horses from eating
the grass intended for hay, and by collecting
the sheep scattered over the mountains,
and driving them to the milking-places.
Hence they abound throughout the country,
and few huts are unprovided with one or two
of them. The Fiaarhuundar of the Icelanders
(Canis islandicus of some authors), if
it has not sufficient characters to rank it as
a species, is at least a very strongly marked
variety; differing in many points from any
of the dogs I have elsewhere seen, but most
nearly approaching the figures and descriptions
that are given us of the Greenland dog.
It is rather below the middle size, well proportioned
in its parts, having a short and a
sharp nose, much resembling that of a fox,
and small erect pointed ears, of which the
tips only, especially in the young animal,
hang down; the hair is coarse, straight, and
thick, very variable in color, but most frequently
of a greyish brown; the tail long
and bushy, and always carried curled over
the back. The following circumstance concerning
the dogs in Iceland is so extraordinary,
that, had I been the only person who
witnessed it, I should scarcely have ventured
to relate the anecdote; but my scruples
are removed, as, so far from this having been
the case, I was not even the first who saw it;
for Mr. Browning, an officer of the Talbot,
whose ill health confined him to a room on
shore, called my attention to it, by more
than once remarking to me that he had, from
his window, in the morning of several successive
days, observed at a certain hour a
number of dogs assemble near his house, as
if by a previously concerted arrangement,
and, after performing a sort of sham fio-ht
for some time, disperse and return to their
homes. A desire to be an eye-witness of so
singular a fact, led me to go to this gentleman’s
room one morning, just as these animals
were about to collect. The spot they
frequented was across the river, which there
are but two ways of^passing from the town
without swimming; the one a bridge, the
other some stepping-stones, each situated
at a small distance from the other. By
both these approaches to the field, the dogs
belonging to Reikevig were running with
the greatest speed, while their companions
of the neighboring country were hastening