[ Bingley / Animal Biography ]
Animal Biography; or Authentic Anecdotes of the Lives, Manners, and Economy of the Animal Creation, Arranged According to the System of Linnæus by William Bingley was a 3-volume work first published in London in 1802 by Richard Phillips. The excerpt below is from the expanded 3rd edition, published in 1805.
Bingley (1774 - 1823) was an English cleric and popular (and prolific) writer of works of travel, natural history, and biography. His strong interest in the natural world led him to become a member of the Linnean Society.
Much of Bingley's discussion of Newfoundland dogs is taken verbatim from Thomas Bewick's A General History of Quadrupeds (1790), which Bingley acknowledges with a source footnote at one point.
The Newfoundland Dogs were originally brought from the country of which they bear the name; where their great strength and docility render them extremely useful to the settlers, who employ them in bringing down wood, on sledges, from the interior parts of the country to the sea-coast. They have great strength, and are able to draw very considerable weights. Four of them yoked to a sledge will trail three hundred-weight of wood, with apparent ease, for seven miles. Their docility is as material to their owners as their strength; for they freqnently perform these services without a driver. As soon as they are relieved of their load at the proper place, they return in the same order to the woods from whence they were dispatched; where their labours are commonly rewarded with a meal of dried fish.
They are web-footed, and can swim extremely fast, and with great ease. Their extraordinary sagacity and attachment to their masters render them, in particular situations, highly valuable.
In the summer of 1792, a gentleman went to Portsmouth for the benefit of sea-bathing. He was conducted in one of the machines into the water; but being unacquainted with the steepness of the shore, and no swimmer, he found himself, the instant he quitted the machine, nearly out of his depth. The state of alarm into which he was thrown increased his danger; and, unnoticed by the person who attended the machine, he would unavoidably have been drowned, had not a large Newfoundand Dog, which by accident was standing on the shore and observed his distress, plunged in to his assistance. The Dog seized him by the hair, and conducted him safely to the shore; but it was some time before he recovered. The gentleman afterwards purchased the Dog at a high price; and preserved him as a treasure of equal value with his whole fortune.
During a severe storm, in the winter of 1789, a ship belonging to Newcastle was lost near Yarmouth; and a Newfoundland Dog alone escaped to shore, bringing in his mouth the captain's pocket-book. He landed amidst a number of people, several of whom in vain attempted to take from him his prize. The sagacious animal, as if sensible of the importance of the charge, which, in all probability, was delivered to him by his perishing master, at length leapt fawningly against the breast of a man who had attracted his notic;c among the crowd, and delivered the book to him. The Dog immediately returned to the place where he had landed, and watched with great attention for all the things that came from the wrecked vessel, seizing them, and endeavouring to bring them to land.
A gentleman, walking by the side of the river Tyne, observed, on the opposite side, that a child had fallen into the water: he pointed out the object to his Dog, which immediately jumped in, swam over, and, catching bold of the child with his mouth, landed it safely on the shore. (pp 218 - 220)
Bingley relates another anecdote invovling a Newfoundland in his entry on porcupines (an anecdote taken almost verbatim from John Church's A Cabinet of Quadrupeds (1790), also treated here at The Cultured Newf).
The late Sir Ashton Lever had a live Porcupine; which he frequently turned out on the grass behind his house, to play with a tame hunting leopard and a large Newfoundand dog. As soon as they were let loose, the Jeopard and dog began to pursue the Porcupine, who always at first endeavoured to escape by flight but, on finding that ineffectual, he would thrust his head into some corner, making a snorting noise, and erecting his spines; with which his pursuers pricked their noses, till they quarrelled between themselves, and thus gave him an opportunity to escape. (p 415)
The late Sir Ashton Lever seems to have had an unusual sense of what constitutes entertainment. . . .