140 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



Throughout the world the dog was the first possession 

 of man and his earHest companion beyond his own race, 

 and the dog has been so long separated from the primitive 

 species that we cannot trace with any certainty the stock 

 from which he originally sprang. No animal has been so 

 thoroughly or so universally domesticated as the dog, in 

 none have the moral and intellectual faculties been so 

 largely developed. Wherever man of any degree of 

 civihzation is found, there also is the dog found. The 

 dog took his origin at a very remote period, for we find 

 undoubted evidence in the very earliest records of his 

 existence and regular domestication. Among the early 

 Hebrews he seems to have been known, or rather despised, 

 and it seems very remarkable that such an astute nation 

 of shepherds should not have domesticated and used so 

 valuable an assistant. Possibly this was partly owing to 

 the prejudice of the Hebrews against an animal which was 

 venerated as a symbol of the Divine Being by the 

 idolatrous Egyptians. Yet this objection cannot go for 

 much, as the Hebrews kept oxen, which were also wor- 

 shipped by the Egyptians. But it must be remembered 

 that in the East dogs were, and are, filthy and savage 

 creatures, which act as scavengers in the towns. The only 

 instance in the Bible where the dog is mentioned as a 

 domestic animal is in Job, chapter 30, verse i, where, 

 speaking of the greatness of his former prosperity, he says, 

 " But now they that are younger than I have me in 

 derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have 

 set with the dogs of my flock." This passage is extremely 

 remarkable as showing at what an earlv period of the 

 world's history the dog was sufficiently domesticated to 

 be capable of the arduous task of guarding sheep — a task, 

 the proper performance of which necessitates a total 

 suspension of the true canine instinct, which is not to 

 guard sheep but to worry and devour them. 



