INTRODUCTION. 89 



Or in the case noticed by Mr Hodgson at Katman- 

 doo, where his experiments proved the Capra tharal* 

 and domestic goat to breed together without diffi- 

 culty. Are we thence to conchide that the musmon 

 and the ibex, the tharal and the domestic goat, are 

 mere varieties of one species ? 



Almost all recent writers on dogs have copied 

 one another so repeatedly, that it is scarcely possible 

 to trace the original authority whence given state- 

 ments of facts have been taken. We cannot there- 

 fore refer to the text whence Mr Bell drew his 

 conclusions ; that there exist " several different in- 

 stances of dogs in such a state of wildness as to 

 have lost even that common character of domestica- 

 tion, — variety of colour aAd marking;" naming as 

 examples the Dhole of India, the Dingo of Aus- 

 tralia, a half reclaimed race of North America, and 

 another partially tamed in South America. Now, 

 if the source whence this statement be derived is 

 the Supplement to the Carnassiers of Mr Griffith's 

 English edition of Cuvier s Animal Kingdom, we 

 may state that it is from one of our own notes, and 

 that the words are, in part at least, those we used ; 

 but it certainly was not, in the original, intended to 

 decide the question, whether these animals were 

 specifically distinct, — wild aborigine^ or the descend- 

 ants of domestic dogs. The writer of the article 

 used his own discretion ; and even he placed it in 



* This name must not be confounded with the C, Jaeluy 

 Ham. Smith No. 869 of Griffith's An. Kingd. 



