> .ORIGIN OF THE DOG 



foundland, &c. The matter is still further simplified 

 when we recall how certain varieties, such as the 

 Fox Terrier, the Airedale Terrier, and others, have 

 been produced within comparatively recent times by 

 a judicious admixture of other breeds. Indeed, it is 

 simply wonderful what man can do with the animal 

 world by a process of careful selection. The dog is a 

 particularly suitable subject upon which to experi- 

 ment, much more so than the horse or cow, owing 

 to the facts that a number of puppies are usually 

 produced in each litter, and that the young reach 

 maturity with a sufficient speed to make a generation 

 represent but a brief span of time . 



I do not propose analysing the arguments in favour 

 of this theory or that as to the ancestry of the dog, 

 but merely to note in passing that one of the greatest 

 authorities of the day, Mr. R. I. Pocock, gives excel- 

 lent reasons for his belief that three, perhaps four, 

 species of jackals, and possibly the Indian wolf as 

 well, have contributed something to the formation 

 of our domestic breeds. Abandoning the region of 

 speculation, evidences have been found to show that 

 man and dog were in alliance during the Neolithic 

 age, and in the Bronze and Iron periods we have 

 proofs that still larger specimens of the canidce 

 existed. Egyptian monuments from three to five 

 thousand years old show us dogs very much like the 

 present-day Greyhound, others which were pre- 

 sumably watch-dogs, and a still smaller animal, with 

 crooked legs, which was not wholly unlike the modern 

 Dachshund. They were objects of veneration to 

 the Egyptians, and it was only recently that the 

 President of the Egyptian Exploration Fund an- 

 nounced the discovery in an excavated cemetery of 



