BERNARD DOG, GREAT ST., a race or variety of dog deriving its name from the hospice of St. Bernard, where it has been long kept by the monks for the purpose of assisting them in the rescue of perishing travelers. Dogs of different races are employed in the same manner at other passes of the Alps. The St. B. dog is remarkable for great size, strength, and sagacity. The dogs not only accompany the monks and servants of the hospice in the benevolent excursions which they regularly make through the most dangerous parts of the pass, but are sent by themselves to search for travelers who may have wandered, and this their extremely acute scent enables them admirably to do. They learn to know what places are most proper to be searched, and some of them show great alertness when the weather assumes a threatening aspect, as if desirous to be at their work. They carry a small flask of wine or brandy attached to their neck, of which the traveler may avail himself. When they find a traveler benumbed with cold, or dis cover by the scent that one has been overwhelmed in an avalanche, they endeaVor by loud barking to attract the'monks to the spot: if they fail in this; arid if 'the traveler is too much exhausted to proceed by their guidance to the hospice, or if they cannot by their own efforts dig away the snow which has covered him, they run to give the alarm by signs which are at once understood. One famous dog, called Barry, in the earlier
part of the present century, wits instrumental in saving the lives of no fewer than 40 human beings. His most memorable achievement was the rescue of a little boy, whose mother had been destroyed by an avalanche, and whom he induced to mount his hack, and so carried him safe to the hospice. The skin of this is preserved in the museum of Bern.—The origin of this valuable race of dogs is not well ascertained, although they are supposed to have sprung from the progeny of a Danish (log left at the hospice by a traveler, and of the Alpine shepherds' dogs. Another account represents an English mastiff as one of their progenitors. There are two subvarieties, however; one with rough hair, like of the Newfoundland, dog, and of a white color, with, black or tawny spots; the other, With close, short hair, more or less •clouded with gray, liver color, and black. Of the former breed, the number is now small. The head and ears resemble those of a water-spaniel, and the St. B. dog has therefore been sometimes classed with spaniels (q.v.).