272 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



its mind is, and ever will be, what it was when, 

 thousands of years ago, some compassionate woman 

 took the pup her owner threw into her arms, and 

 reared it, suckling it perhaps at her own breast; 

 and when in after days it followed at the heels of 

 its savage master and astonished him by assisting 

 in the capture of his quarry. 



It is not, then, the dog's intelligence, which is 

 less than that of many other species, and is non- 

 progressive in spite of all that training and selection 

 can do, which makes it valuable to us. Nor has 

 it any advantage over other species in those 

 qualities of affection, fidelity, and good temper 

 about which we hear so much rapturous language; 

 for these things are lower down than reason and 

 exist throughout the mammalian world, in animals 

 high and low, little and big, from the harvest mouse 

 to the hippopotamus. The dog is more valuable 

 to us than other species because we have got him. 

 We inherited him and were thereby saved a large 

 amount of trouble. He is tame; the others are 

 wild. His intellect is small and stationary, but his 

 structure is variable, and, more important still, so 

 are his instincts; or perhaps it would be more 

 correct to say that new propensities, which often 

 prove hereditary, and which by selection and 

 training may be fixed and strengthened until they 

 are made to resemble instincts, are of frequent 

 occurrence in him. The more or less settled pro- 

 pensities in our domestic animals, originating in 

 the domestic state, are no doubt in one sense 



