CHAPTER II 



DOGS 



We shall now have to leave tlie cats and tnrn to the 

 great friend and comforter of man — the dog and his 

 allies. Numberless stories have been told and books 

 written recording the intelligence and devoted affec- 

 tion of dogs. " Faithful as a dog " has become a 

 proverb, though exactly why the dog should have 

 acquired this admiration and affection for man is 

 difficult to explain, when all his relatives are abso- 

 lutely untamable. Mr. Maurice Maeterlinck's 

 impersonation of the dog character in Tylo in his 

 play of " The Blue Bird " is most appealiugly true 

 and pathetic, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling's lines in 

 '^ Actions and Reactions " could only have been 

 written by one who had experienced the devotion 

 of a dog friend. ' Rab and His Friends/ too, will 

 always be a story dear to dog lovers. These are but 

 one or two masterpieces among many delineations of 

 dog character. 



The origin of domestic dogs, of which there are 

 about 180 varieties, is much more obscure than that 

 of the domestic cat. The dingo or wild dog of 

 Australia, though quite wild now, is thought to have 

 been formerly tame and brought to Australia by the 



