104 INTRODUCTION. 



other laws, whose periods of operation we are not 

 competent to measure. 



Without, therefore, recapitulating the various 

 arguments adduced in the foregoing pages, we are 

 inclined to believe there are sufficient data to doubt 

 the opinion that the different races of domestic 

 dogs are all sprung from one species, and still more 

 that the wolf (^Cmiis lupus, Linn.) w^as the sole 

 parent in question ; on the contrary, we are inclined 

 to lean, for the present, to the conjecture that seve- 

 ral species, aborigine^ constructed with faculties to 

 intermix, including the w^olf, the buansu, the anthus, 

 the dingo, and the jackal, w^ere parents of domestic 

 dogs. That even the dhole, or a thous, may have 

 been progenitors of the greyhound races ; and that 

 a lost or undiscovered species, allied to Cants tricolor 

 or Hymna mnatica of Burchell, was the source of 

 the short mu^jzled and strong jawed races of primi 

 tive mastiffs. 



Whatever may be thought of this opinion, thus 

 much at least is certain, that the advances towards 

 forming hybrid races are always made by the domes- 

 tic species to the wild ; and that when thus obtained, 

 if kept to itself, and the cross breed gradually be- 

 come sterile, it does not prevent repeated intermix- 

 ture of one or the other, and therefore the admission 

 of a great proportion of alien blood, which may 

 again be crossed upon by the admission of hybrids 

 from another source, whether it be wolf, jackal, 

 pahariah, or dingo; and that experiments, in the 

 form they have been hitherto made, in a different 



