14 THE AMERICAN HUNTING DOG 



of the eye, that of the fox being cat-like, in shape 

 similar to the cross-section of a lens, and that of 

 both wolves and dogs being round; and the fox 

 eye, in turn, owes its shape to the bonal structure 

 of the eye, which is the principal skeletal differ- 

 ence between the skull of a fox and that of dogs 

 and wolves. 



From the earliest records of man, however, the 

 dog appears as a domesticated animal. The cave 

 men of all periods have left both the bones of 

 dogs, and bones gnawed by them and since fos- 

 silised, and they were undoubtedly used as hunt- 

 ing companions and watch dogs by our very earli- 

 est forebears. 



The earliest known relic of man, except the man- 

 ape (pithecanthropoid) is the skull found at Tal- 

 gai, in Australia, antedating even the famous Pitts- 

 down skull which put the ancestry of man back 

 in the Pleistocene. The Australian skull is in- 

 teresting for two reasons ; it was found in deposits 

 of a time when all the animals of Australia were 

 marsupials, and it is surrounded with the bones 

 of dingo dogs and marsupial bones gnawed by 

 those dogs, besides others broken by the man. 

 Now, as these two were the only non-marsupials 

 in all the deposits of that period, it follows that 

 the man must have come to Australia and brought 



