428 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



have no right, on the contrary, to expect, and there is no decided proof 

 that we do find, in wild canines, other than feral dogs, a true bark. 



The bark is the language of the domesticated dog, and by it he ex- 

 presses the various emotions of joy, anger, fear, or suffering ; and, as 

 in human language, it must have been the work of ages to develop 

 canine education to the point of a domesticated bark. 



As far as Gumming goes, then, there are no proper wild dogs in 

 Africa, but only jackals, hyenas, and lycaons, which may on rare occa- 

 sions make noises which the vivid imagination of a Gumming might 

 magnify into the bark of a collie. 



Taking the word harh as we generally understand it, there seems no 

 reason to affirm that wild dogs bark, any more than that wild felines 

 mew; and it must be a very acute sense of hearing that would detect 

 the bark of the dog in the voices of the wolf, fox, and jackal, or the 

 mew of the cat in the growls of the lion "'and tiger. Though it be a 

 difference of degree and not of kind, it is precisely the degree brought 

 about by domestication alone. Even the half-civilized Esquimaux dog 

 does not bark, his education not having reached that degree of refine- 

 ment. 



Comments were offered by Professors Bowen, Agassiz, 

 Gray, and others. 



The subjoined abstract of Mr. J. A. Lowell's remarks be- 

 long to a preceding meeting, and should have been introduced 

 on page 410. 



Mr. Lowell said that the book* recently published by Mr. Darwin on 

 the origin of species had deservedly attracted great attention, both in 

 this country and in Europe. It is written with admirable candor, and 

 rests on an ample and patiently accumulated collection of facts. Had 

 the author, however, confined himself to the subject indicated in his 

 title-page, his work would scarcely have inspired such universal inter- 

 est. It is because he has unfolded a new theory of creation, that his 

 views are espoused or combated with so much zeal. His facts are ap- 

 parently, for the most part, uncontroverted ; and it is precisely this 

 admission of the facts that takes the inquiry from the exclusive domain 

 of science, and opens it to all who are qualified to examine it merely 

 as a deduction from acknowledged premises. The argument may be 

 summed up in this : — 



