Scriptural Allusion. 



will please the student of the dog who wishes to make that 

 of the shepherd the ideal from which all other varieties 

 have sprung, and it is right perhaps that so handsome a 

 huntsman should be accompanied by equally handsome 

 dogs. Still, as a pack they do not seem likely animals to 

 cope successfully with the 



Foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar. 



that killed Adonis, from whose blood the fair anemone was 

 said to spring. 



In some quarters astonishment is at times expressed that 

 in the Old and New Testaments, in which so much is 

 written of flocks and shepherds, so little is said as to dogs 

 used for the protection of the former. As a fact no 

 allusion whatever is made in the New Testament to shep- 

 herds' dogs of any kind, and, in the Old Testament, only in 

 Job does the diligent searcher after knowledge find any 

 verse which gives the inference that at the time the book 

 was written dogs of some kind were used as assistants to 

 those who looked after the flocks. The passage in question 

 is to be found in chapter 30, verse i, and is as follows : 

 " Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with 

 the dogs of my flocks." 



This, then, is the only allusion throughout the whole of 

 the Scriptures which can be taken to mean the sheep dog. 

 The Jews considered the dog an unclean beast, as they are 

 said to have done all quadrupeds that had cloven hoofs or 

 did not chew the cud. Such being the case there is little 

 wonder that so useful an animal as the shepherds' dog 

 should fail to meet with his deserts from Jewish historians. 



Dr. Tristram, in his Natural History of the Bible, is very 

 meagre in the information he gives about the dog. His 



