THE DOG. 



OF the various works of man, there are few of which he 

 has more reason to be proud than the transforma- 

 tion under his hands of the wild dog into the domesticated 

 animal. The change was not early effected; during 

 Scriptural times it had made but little progress. The term 

 " dog" is everywhere used as one of opprobrium. " Is thy 

 servant a dog that he should do this ? " is in itself sufficient 

 to show that the possibility of the dog being possessed of 

 many virtues had never occurred to the speaker. The dog 

 was, indeed, regarded down to comparatively modern times 

 in three lights only :. as a scavenger, as a guard against wild 

 beasts, and as an assistant in the chase, and it is thus 

 that he is still viewed in the East and by uncivilised 

 peoples. It must be owned that the wild dog, or the dog 

 such as he exists on sufferance in Oriental communities, has 

 but few higher claims, that he is by nature but little in 

 advance of his cousins the wolf, the jackal, and the coyote, 

 and that he is cowardly, cringing, and ferocious according 

 to circumstance. His virtues, in fact, are at this stage 

 altogether latent ; he has been cowed by a long course of 

 misapprehension and ill-treatment, and displays only his 

 worst qualities. It is as difficult to recognise him as a near 



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