Early History of the Dog 23 



wrote of the dingoes as being of the size of mastiffs. Other instances of 

 this exaggeration in description have already been mentioned, and we had 

 better discard them as fanciful and look at things rationally, and as far as 

 possible take illustrations from life in place of statements. 



The Assyrian dogs might have been thirty inches high, and that was 

 likely higher than those of Egypt. The shoulder-height of the ordinary 

 gentleman's dog of Greece and Rome was twenty inches. The late Colonel 

 Stuart Taylor had for many years a standing offer of one thousand dollars 

 for a dog of thirty-four inches, and did not withdraw it till he had measured 

 the St. Bernard " Rector," which he would not buy on account of its con- 

 dition, coupled with the pleading of the owner's wife. 



These are facts and are strongly in contrast with the frequently quoted 

 statement in Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," that the Irish wolfhounds 

 were four feet tall. That four-footer, if he was ever measured, must have 

 been tested with "Harry Reed's tape." The explanation of this remark 

 is that on one occasion a sporting authority of that name had to referee a 

 jumping competition in which a man had undertaken to clear a certain 

 distance. Reed was paid to make the man lose by "faking" the tape. 

 Fortunately for the man. Reed, in place of inserting an extra foot in the tape, 

 cut one out, and when it came to measuring the jump, it made a difference 

 of two feet in the man's favour over what was intended. For years after 

 that when there seemed anything queer with regard to a measured distance 

 in sporting matters in England, some one would remark that they must 

 have had Harry Reed's tape, and most assuredly many dogs even to this day 

 have been measured with that article in the home kennels. 



Research on the American continent has not yielded anything very 

 definite, there not being the counterpart of the Egyptian or Assyrian monu- 

 ments or the contents of palaces or tombs to ransack. Fossil remains are at 

 best very indefinite, and geologists tell of "true dogs" without being able 

 to say much more than what we read of the lake-dweller's marsh-dog. 



It takes very little harking back to get to prehistoric times even in the 

 oldest parts of America — only to the conquest in the sixteenth century — so 

 that we have no knowledge as to the age of the mummy remains recovered 

 from Colombia and the west coast of South America. If we only knew 

 something about the dates, it would be more interesting as to the dogs found 

 in those despoiled tombs. Reiss and Stubel in their handsomely illustrated 

 "Necropolis of Ancon" give one plate to dog-skulls, and in the accompany- 



