178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Curiously enough, when the pig is used for hunting purposes, the 

 dogs, usually so eager for the chase, sullenly retire from the field 

 and refuse to associate with their bristly competitor in venery. 

 Possibly the hereditary and ineradicable enmity between the dog 

 and hog as domestic animals may be a survival of the fierce an- 

 tipathy which is known to exist between the wolf and the wild 

 boar. In Burmah the ringed snake is trained for the chase, and 

 is especially serviceable in flushing jungle-cock, since the reptile 

 can penetrate the thickest underbrush, where it would be impos- 

 sible for a dog or a falcon to go. 



The tamability of an animal is simply its capability of adapt- 

 ing itself to new relations in life, and depends partly on its mental 

 endowments, but still more upon its moral character. It is quite 

 as much a matter of temperament and social disposition as of 

 quickness of understanding. The elephant, dog, and horse among 

 quadrupeds, the beaver among rodents, and the daw and raven 

 among birds, are, for this reason, most easily tamed, and show 

 the most marked and rapid improvement in consequence of their 

 daily intercourse with man. Intellectual acuteness without the 

 social affections and kindred moral qualities rather resists than 

 facilitates domestication. Of all domestic animals the cat was 

 the most difficult to tame, and it needed the patience and persist- 

 ence so strongly characteristic of the ancient Egyptians, sustained 

 by religious superstition, in order to accomplish this result. Even 

 now the cat, although extremely fond of its home and capable of 

 considerable attachment to persons, has never been reduced to 

 strict servitude and become the valet of man like the dog, but 

 has always remained to a certain degree what it originally was, 

 a prowling beast of prey. 



Barking in dogs is a habit due to domestication. The wild 

 dog never barks, but only howls, like the Himalayan buansu, or 

 merely whines, like the East Indian colsum ; and the domestic 

 dog reverts from barking to howling when it relapses into its 

 primitive state. Wagging the tail is another mode of expression 

 which the dog has acquired through association with man. It is 

 well known, too, that a dog which has been reared by a cat adopts 

 many of the habits of its foster-mother, such as cleaning itself 

 with its paw; by continuously pairing such dogs and rearing 

 them under like influences it would be possible to produce a 

 canine species with feline traits, which should become jDermanent 

 and transmissible. 



A recent writer. Dr. Leopold Schutz, professor in the theo- 

 logical seminary at Treves, who may be taken as an extreme 

 representative of the old orthodox school of zoopsychologists, 

 maintains that animals do not think, reflect, form purposes, or 

 act with premeditation of any kind, have no freedom, no choice. 



