THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 



Guinea and mid-Africa does not, as a rule, 

 take the trouble to tame and train an adult 

 wild animal for his own purposes, and 

 primitive man was surely equally indifferent 

 to the questionable advantage of harbour- 

 ing a dangerous guest. But a litter of 

 woolly whelps introduced into the home 

 as playthings for the children would grow 

 to regard themselves, and be regarded, as 

 members of the family, and it would soon 

 be found that the hunting instincts of the 

 maturing animal were of value to his 

 captors. The savage master, treading the 





Danish " Kitchen -middens," or heaps of 

 household refuse, piled up by the men of 

 the Newer Stone age — an age when these 

 Neolithic peoples used chipped or pol- 

 ished flints instead of metal for their 

 weapons — are found bone remnants belong- 

 ing to some species of the genus Canis. 

 Along with these remains are some of the 

 long bones of birds, all the other bones of 

 the birds being absent. Now it is known 

 that there are certain bird bones — those of 

 the legs and wings — which dogs cannot 

 devour, and it is just these which remain, 

 while the absent ones are 

 of the kind which any dog 

 will eat. The inference 

 is that when the family 

 meal was finished the 

 scraps were cast to the 

 dogs, who ate what they 

 could. 



Other doe bones of 



PREHISTORIC ROCK TRACING REPRESENTING REINDEER, 

 BOAT, MEN, AND DOGS. CUT IN THE QUARTZ 

 SKEE PARISH, BOHUSLAN. 

 Height, 5 ft. : Width, K} ft. 



primeval forests in search of food, would 

 not fail to recognise the helpfulness of a 

 keener nose and sharper eyes even than his 

 own unsullied senses, while the dog in his 

 turn would find a better shelter in associa- 

 tion with man than if he were hunting on 

 his own account. Thus mutual benefit 

 would result in some kind of tacit agree- 

 ment of partnership, and through the gener- 

 ations the wild wolf or jackal would gradu- 

 ally become gentler, more docile, and tract- 

 able, and the dreaded enemy of the flock 

 develop into the trusted guardian of the 

 fold. 



Convincing evidence of this friendship 

 between the Canidce and primitive man 

 is to be found in the remains left by the 

 ancient cave-dwellers, where the half-petrified 

 bones of men and dogs are mingled ; and the 

 prehistoric savages of Northern Europe have 

 left many such silent mementoes of the 

 past which enable us to gain an insight 

 into the conditions of their daily life and 

 their domestication of animals. In the 



HORSE IN A 

 MASSLEBERG, 



later periods are found in 

 Denmark. At the time 

 when the flint knives were 

 succeeded by weapons of 

 bronze, a large dog existed, 

 and at the time when iron came into use there 

 was a still larger one, presenting certain 

 differences. Probably the oldest dog of which 

 there is any dependable record is one which 

 was partially domesticated in Switzerland 

 during the Lake dwelling period. It some- 

 what resembled our Hound and Setter, and 

 in the formation of its skull it was equally 

 remote from the wolf and the jackal. Thus 

 we see that at a time when our ancestors 

 were living in caves or on pile-supported 

 dwellings in a condition of civilisation akin 

 to that of barbaric races to be found in the 

 present day, the dog was already system- 

 atically kept and improved by selection. 



If these fossil deposits were not sufficient 

 to prove that the earliest human beings of 

 whom we have any trace had subjected the 

 dog to their companionship, further evidence 

 is given in the rude, untutored drawings 

 which the men of the so-called Reindeer 

 period inscribed upon the imperishable 

 rocks as records of heroic deeds and adven- 

 tures. Most of these rock inscriptions, which 



