THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 281 



soul, senses, appetites, and instincts, and it is 

 worth while inquiring whether contact with man 

 has had the same ameliorating effect on these as it 

 is supposed to have had on his psychical faculties. 

 In other words, has he ceased to be a jackal ? For 

 if a negative answer must be given, it follows that, 

 however fit to be the servant, the dog is scarcely 

 fit to be the intimate associate and friend of man ; 

 for friendship implies a similarity in habits, if 

 nothing more, and man is not by nature an unclean 

 animal. 



Dr. Romanes, in his work on Mental Evolution 

 in Animals, speaks of what he calls unpleasant 

 survivals in the dog, such as burying food until it 

 becomes offensive before eating it, turning round 

 and round on the hearth-rug before lying down, 

 rolling in filth, etc., etc., and he says that they have 

 remained unaffected by contact with man because 

 these instincts being neither useful nor harmful 

 have never been either cultivated or repressed. 

 From which it may be inferred that in his opinion 

 these disagreeable habits may be got rid of in 

 time. But why does he call them survivals ? If 

 the action, so frequently observed in the dog, of 

 turning round several times before lying down, is 

 correctly ascribed to an ancient habit in the wild 

 animal of treading down the grass to make a bed 

 to sleep on, it is rightly called a survival, and is a 

 habit neither useful nor harmful in the domesticated 

 state, which has never been either cultivated or 

 repressed, and will in time disappear. Thus far 



