H 



OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



greeting with lamentable howls a street organ, 

 the good or bad playing of a piano, the vulgar 

 or the artistic twanging of a violin, or the soft, 

 sweet singing of a lute. People call it howling. 

 A dog neither laughs nor weeps. Is he sad, 



The bite of an angry dog is to be feared. 

 His teeth are shown as far as possible, his lips 

 and ears are drawn back, and his hair bristles 

 up along his spine. The meeting of two dogs, 

 strangers to each other or distrustful, is nearly 



he puts his tail between his legs, hangs his always accompanied by these phen(jmena. 



V. The Pkinxip.vl F.amilies 

 OF DcxiS 



It has always been, and still 

 is, a brain puzzle to class cor- 

 rectly the innumerable canine 

 races. Aristotle (333 B.C.) 

 began to do so, and the end 

 is not yet in sight. Hunting 

 (.logs, pet dogs, useful dogs 

 great and small, street dogs, 

 watchdogs, have served as 

 the main groups. Cuvier de- 

 sired to introduce a new 

 classification of the canine 

 races according to the length 

 of their skulls. Linnaeus gave 

 only a passing attention to 

 them, and Fitzinger estimated 

 head, and emits a plaintive howl. Is he joyful, that three hundred species were altogether too 

 his behavior is just the contrary : the expressive few. Suppose we try, in our turn, to make no 

 thermometer of his soul rises, quivers, wags, classification at all. Open the iron gates wide 

 and a joyous bark, quite different from all other and let them all come in pellmell — dogs with 

 barks, sharper and shorter, is heard. When short hair, long hair, wiry hair, and smooth hair, 

 certain dogs are in particularly good humor little dogs and great dogs, sporting dogs, hunting 

 they show their teeth from time to time and dogs, watchdogs, and let one and all show what 

 clack them, protruding their li}is 

 and a sort of grimace spreads 



Tdd H(^T IX F 



C(iLI) lil HIM) 



over their visage. They 

 also express joy by leaps, 

 rolling on the ground, / 

 and all sorts of comic 

 contortions ; and, what 

 is very remarkable, the 

 .same expressive motions arc- 

 seen in wolves and jackals. The 

 licking of their master's hand 

 must be regarded as derived from the habit of 



SCRUTIXY 



they are and what they can do. 

 Fox terriers. It w'ould be 

 marvelous if the agile, 

 \ combative fox terrier did 

 j not come first. He is a 

 / joyous animal, who is no 

 longer exclusively em- 

 '- ployed in fox hunting or in 

 starting game (foxes and 

 badgers). He has become the 

 fashionable pleasure dog, and 

 such he remains, due, doubtless, to his neat 



licking objects that are dear to them — their figure, his lively air, and his amusing nature, 



young, for instance. Hence comes also the Belonging to the great family of terriers (known 



habit of some dogs and their congeners of in England in 16 17, during the reign of James I, 



biting one another in play. as earth dogs, terriers), he is really much less 



