THE DOG SEASON.
MAD dogs are this season quite the rage. We know not what has brought them so forward, for they used seldom to come in till after the peas. In the dulness of the season, consequent on the King's illness, however, the dogs may find nothing better to do than to run mad. Certain it is that the sun has given them no provocation, but we have bad rain enough to justify any degree of aversion to water. Be the cause what it may, the nation is, as GOLDSMITH says, putting on an air of resolution, and betaking itself to precautions and remedies against the tooth of' dogs, or, to employ the more beautiful expression of newspapers, the "canine race." The infallible recipes which are consequently making their appearance are highly curious. We copy this example from a Morning Paper. hi "The following receipt for the bite of a mad dog was taken out of Cathorp church, in Lincolnshire, the whole towa being bitten with a dog ; all that took this medicine did well, and the rest died mad; and it has since been found effectual in every instance, not only to human kind, but to dogs, cattle, and other animals. Take the leaves of rue, picked from the stalks and bruised, six ounces ; garlick, picked from the stalks, and bruised; Venice treacle, and Mithridate, and the scrapings of pewter, of each four ounces. Boil all these over a slow fire in two quarts of strong ale till one pint be consumed ; then keep it in a bottle closely stopped up, and give of it nine spoonsful to a man or a woman; warm, seven mornings together, fasting, and six to a dog. This the author believes will not (by God's blessing) fail, if it be given within nine days after the bite of the dog ; apply some of the ingredients from which the liquor was strained to the bitten part."
It is singular that such a disaster as a whole town bitten with a dog, is not recorded in the history of national calamities. How. large is that description of mortality—those who took this medicine did well, the rest died! One gentleman recommends physieking the dogs—"throw physic to the dogs," says Macbeth—as a preventive against their going mad, or perhaps against their going at all. Physic is very apt to stop physical actions of every quality.
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