As a carrier of merchandize, the most delicate task which a dog has to perform is in the inland smuggling trade of the Continent. In this arduous service, which is constantly fatal to him, he shows a wonderful sagacity. Loaded with goods he sets out in the night, scents the custom-bouse officer, attacks him if he can take him at a disadvantage, and conceals himself, if escape is difficult, behind a bush or tree. On his arrival at his destination he will not show himself till he has first ascertained that the coast is clear, and while he remains gives warning of the approach of the common enemy. It is manifest that a whole army of custom-house officers can do little towards exterminating smugglers, of whom the supply is unlimited, who cross the frontiers in silence and darkness, whose road is the pathless wood and plain, who snuff danger in the wind, and who either evade it by their swiftness, or find a lurking place in every hedge row.

We turn with pleasure from the illicit functions in which the monopoly of guilt and pro fit is to the man, and that of peril and suffering to his faithful animal. The shepherd's dog in his own department, is a perfect miracle of intelligence. He understands the sign, the voice, the look of his master He collects the scattered sheep at the slightest signal, separates any one that is indicated from the rest of the flock, drives them wherever he is told, and keeps them all the while under perfect control, less by his active exertions than by the modulations of his voice, which expresses every tone, from gentle instruction to-angry menace. These are his ordinary performances, visible every day in a thousand pa tures. But he can do greater wonders. It chanced one night that seven hundred lambs, committed to the keeping of the Ettrick Shepherd, broke loose from his control and scampered away in three divisions over hill and plain. 'Sirrah, my man,' said Hogg mournfully to his colly meaning it for an expression of grief, and not for a direction, they're awa.' Silently, and without his master's knowledge, for it was too dark to see, the dog left his side, while the shepherd passed the hours till morning in a weary and fruitless search after his wandering charge.

At the dawn of day he was about to return to his employer with a heart full of despair, when he caught a Sight of Sirrah guarding at the bottom of a deep ravine, not, as he at first supposed, one division of the lambs, but the whole of the vast flock, without a solitary exception. 'It was,' says James Hogg, ' the most extraordinary circumstance that had ever occurred in my pastoral life. How he had got all the divisions collected in the dark, is beyond my comprehension. The charge was left entirely to himself, from midnight until the rising of the sun, and if all the shepherds in the Forest had been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety.' On another occasion the same famous shepherd saw a dog, when it was utterly dark, put upon the path of a ewe that had been lost by her owner near a neighbor's farm, and which was supposed to have mingled with her fellows that were feeding in the surrounding pastures. ' Chieftain, ' said the master of the dog, pointing to the spot from which the sheep had gone off, 'fetch that, I say, sir - bring that back; away!' And away he went, and back he brought in half an hour the identical sheep- A sheep-stealer who was at last discovered and hanged, used to carry on his trade by secretly signifying the particular sheep that he wanted out of a large flock, as he viewed them under the pretence of purchasing, to his dog, who returning by himself, a distance of several miles, at night drove the selected sheep, which were undoubtedly the fattest, to his fastidious owner.

Both Scott and Hogg relate this picturesque story most circumstantially from the annals of the Justiciary Court in Scotland. Sir Thomas Wilde knew an instance in which three oxen out of some score had mingled with another herd. ' Go fetch them,' was all the instruction the drover gave his dog, and he instantly brought along with him those very three. A cattle dealer, accustomed to drive his beasts for nine miles, to Alston in Cumberland, once for a wager, sent them alone with his dog. The animal perfectly understood his commiesioa. He kept the straight road, ran when he came to a strange drove, to the bead of Ins own, to stop their progress, put the beasts that blocked the path upon one side, then was back again to the rear, to hie on his charge, and thus adroitly steering his way and keeping his herd together, he carried them safely to the destined yard, and signified their arrival by barking at the door of the dwelling. More than this, the dog will on emergencies, volunteer services which occur to none but himself. One lias been known of his own accord, to overtake a runaway horse, siese his bridle, and hold him fast till lie was secured. Lately, in France, a stable took fire that was full of cattle, and, as usual, the animals, stricken with terror, refused to stir.

It caught the eye of the farmer's dog, who rushed in, and by barks and bites, forced out at two several charges, the greater part of the beasts, and went back a third time for a few remaining sheep, when the flames had sonde such progress that they were already dead.

It may be questioned after all, whether the sagacity of the dog in keeping sheep is equal to his sagacity when he has taken to kill them, a vice that is incorrigible when once contracted, admitting no other remedy than the death of the culprit. The dexterity by which he endeavors, as if aware of the consequences, to escape detection, is not surpassed, and hardly equalled, by human felons. Sir Thomas Wilde was cognisant of a case in which the dog had learnt to slip off his collar and put it on again when he returned from his nocturnal depredations. In a similar instance, the animal took the additional precaution of washing his bloody jaws in a stream, unless indeed, the supposed act of cunning was simply the result of thirst. Bewick, in his History of Quadrupeds, mentions a dog that for three months committed havoc on every side, in defiance of the most strenuous exertions to effect his destruction. His habit was to sit on a hill from whence he could command a view of the surrounding roads, and have time to escape at the approach of danger.