tions of the ducal
office were assigned to other officials, or to administrative boards,
and he who had once been the pilot of the ship became little more than
an animated figurehead, properly draped and garnished. On state
occasions he was surrounded by an increasing amount of ceremonial, and
in international relations he had the status of a sovereign prince of
the first rank. But he was under the strictest surveillance. He must
wait for the presence of other officials before opening despatches from
foreign powers; he was forbidden to leave the city and was not allowed
to possess any property in a foreign land. To quote H. F. Brown, "his
pomp was splendid, his power limited; he appears as a symbol rather than
as a factor in the constitution, the outward and visible sign of the
impersonal oligarchy." The office, however, was maintained until the
closing days of the republic, and from time to time it was held by men
who were able to make it something more than a sonorous title. The last
doge was Lodovico Manin, who abdicated in May 1797, when Venice passed
under the power of Napoleon.

In Genoa the institution of the doge dates from 1339. At first he was
elected without restriction and by popular suffrage, holding office for
life; but after the reform effected by Andrea Doria in 1528 the term of
his office was reduced to two years. At the same time plebeians were
declared ineligible, and the appointment of the doge was entrusted to
the members of the great and the little councils, who employed for this
purpose a machinery almost as complex as that of the later Venetians.
The Napoleonic Wars put an end to the office of doge at Genoa.

See Cecchetti, _Il Doge di Venezia_ (1864); Musatti, _Storia della
promissione ducale_ (Padua, 1888); and H. F. Brown, _Venice: a
Historical Sketch_ (1893).

DOG-FISH, a name applied to several species of the smaller sharks, and
given in common with such names as hound and beagle, owing to the habit
these fishes have of pursuing or hunting their prey in packs. The
small-spotted dog-fish or rough hound (_Scyllium canicula_) and the
large-spotted or nurse hound (_Scyllium catulus_) are also known as
ground-sharks. They keep near the sea bottom, feeding chiefly on the
smaller fishes and Crustacea, and causing great annoyance to the
fishermen by the readiness with which they take bait. They differ from
the majority of sharks, and resemble the rays in being oviparous. The
eggs are