BRITISH DOGS 



Still, before doing so, there will be no harm in taking a cursory 

 glance at some of the theories of the more practical naturalists with 

 regard to the origin of the Domestic dog. The evidences of the 

 existence of prehistoric dogs, as already suggested, are of the 

 scantiest, and often of the rudest, and it is by reason of this fact 

 that so much in connection with primeval dogs is left to absolute 

 conjecture. However, so wonderfully polymorphic is the Domestic 

 dog as met with to-day, that one is constantly beset with the 

 thought as to its origin. It must be confessed that it is difficult 

 to believe that such an atom of dog flesh as the Chihuahua dog, 

 the Japanese Spaniel, the Pug, the Greyhound, the Spaniel, and 

 the huge-framed St. Bernard all sprang from one species of wild 

 true dog. Yet, as Mr. St. John Mivart, in his " Monograph of the 

 CanidaV' suggests, it is possible, and we certainly see no reason to 

 doubt it. Some naturalists incline to the theory that certain varieties 

 of the Domestic dog, showing a good deal in common, sprang from 

 different species possessing such characteristics, and that these 

 were simply awaiting development at the hands of man. Against 

 this must be placed, as Mr. St. John Mivart points out, the fact 

 that no such races exist in Nature. " They can hardly all have 

 existed," he says, "and become extinct, for two reasons: first, 

 palaeontology affords us no evidence that such has been the case ; 

 secondly, . . . the dog family is not one the species of which tend 

 readily to disappear, as is shown by the long, persistent efforts 

 needed to exterminate the wolf even in the most civilised parts of 

 the habitable globe. Therefore the Domesticated dog cannot well 

 be the product or a variety of wild true dog once widely diffused, 

 but now entirely extinct. . . . That the various breeds known to 

 us may nevertheless have originated from one form must be 

 admitted to be possible, when we consider the changes that have 

 taken place in old breeds, and the new forms that have been called 

 forth in the historical period." 



Of those naturalists who assert that more than one species have 

 contributed the elements that have resulted in the production of the 

 Domestic dog, Darwin is one. He intimates that all Domestic 

 dogs are descended from two species of wolf Cant's lupus and 

 Cam's latrans. These were both savage when hunting gregariously, 

 but were readily amenable to man's influence when dealt with 

 singly. Certain it is that there are many characteristics common 

 to both the wild and the domesticated Canidcz of to-day. The 

 Australian Dingo, that pest of the sheep and the stock farmer, is 

 as savage as any of its more ancestral prototypes when hunting, as 

 is its wont, in flocks. Yet that it is capable of at least semi- 

 domestication has been demonstrated beyond the shadow of a 

 doubt. Again, students of dog-form will readily see the very close 

 resemblance that there is between the wolves and many present-day 



