IV THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 113 



of jackals. They were originally jackals which, under the protec- 

 tion of the noble Mohammedan custom not to harm animals 

 but to cherish them and feed them, established themselves 

 in the neighbourhood of men in villages and towns, although 

 men did not domesticate them or assume ownership in them. 

 They are thus in perfect liberty. These dogs supply the best 

 proof of the truth of what I have before said, viz. that the 

 cessation of natural selection through the struggle for existence 

 in a natural state, and the positive influence of the environ- 

 ment of civilised life, are the causes which have produced the 

 new characters in these dogs. In place of the old jackal 

 colour, the yellow of the desert, and the traces of definite in- 

 herited markings upon this general colour, appear the begin- 

 nings of another colouring and of a new marking of spots, 

 the latter following the law which, with the help of the 

 explanation given by me in Humloldt, can always be recog- 

 nised more or less distinctly in our domestic dog. Each dog 

 is on the occurrence of these changes apparently quite 

 different from every other, but in reality the dark spots are 

 constantly on definite portions of the skin, the light or white 

 spots on the intermediate portions. No man, no kind of 

 selection, has contributed to this result : for the dogs' sense of 

 beauty cannot be adduced in favour of sexual selection (in 

 which, in dogs, the sense of beauty scarcely plays a 

 part) in this modification : because the new characters, 

 making their appearance for the first time in spite of the long 

 continued inheritance of the old, are always irregular in com- 

 parison with these, and often have a positively ugly irregular- 

 ity. The ears of these Constantinople street-dogs occasionally 

 begin to show signs of drooping at the tips, a change which is 

 so complete in many of our races of dogs, e.g. in pointers, that 

 they have lost much in the sense of hearing by domestication. 

 This change is obviously due to the absence of the need to 

 use their ears, and to the cessation of selection in relation to 



I 



