CHAPTER I 



Early History of the Dog 



HEORIES as to the origin of the dog have been plentiful, and 

 as unsatisfactory as plentiful. We have got little further in 

 that direction than was the case a hundred years ago, when 

 but little was known regarding the history of the world 

 beyond what was stated in the Bible and could be found 

 in Greek or Roman, or still more modern, literature. Since then 

 we have travelled back to full seven thousand years ago, and as far back as we 

 find the dog represented by drawings, sculpture, or carvings, we find him a dis- 

 tinct animal. Why the dog should not be given as much credit for originality 

 as any other animal is almost remarkable; but some people have it that 

 he is but a wolf, a prairie-wolf, or a jackal domesticated, and when it comes 

 to the varieties of the dog, we have the most marvellous assumptions. 

 There was not a dog living, according to writers of the eighteenth century, 

 that was not a cross between two other varieties, or even impossible crosses, 

 such as the mastiff being from a cross with the hyena, while some other 

 breed had a dash of the Bengal leopard. The former assertion was made 

 by such eminent naturalists as Pallas and Burchell, and even Lowe 

 stated in his modern "Domestic Animals of Great Britain" that it was 

 very possible. The wild dogs of India were said to be a cross between 

 the wolf and the tiger, and other equally ridiculous statements were made. 

 That the dog and wolf will cross, and that a cross between the fox and 

 dog has been repeatedly claimed, are well-known facts, but these are mules 

 and will breed only with the parent stock, whereas, no matter how widely 

 different are the varieties of dog crossed, the progeny is fruitful inter se. 

 At Wilton House, England, there is an epitaph, as follows: "Here lies 

 Lupa, whose grandmother was a wolf, whose father and grandfather were 

 dogs, and whose mother was half wolf and half dog. She died on the i6th 

 of October, 1782, aged twelve years." That is the record of an experiment 

 conducted by Lord Clanbrassil and Lord Pembroke. Others have experi- 

 mented in the same way, but it is the interbreeding of the progeny that is 

 the impossible and proves them to be mules. 



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