14 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



reasonable to betake ourselves to another basis for the 

 natural history of the dog, which has not yet been made 

 a matter of much inquiry, but which promises to afford us 

 more substantial truth than the conjectures which we have 

 just considered. 



We should, in the first place, note the fact that the ances- 

 tors of our more important domesticated animals, those which 

 have been longest in subjugation, have commonly disappeared 

 from the wild state — the species, except for the cultivated 

 forms, having gone into the irrecoverable past. This is the 

 case with the wild kindred of our bulls, horses, sheep, and 

 camels, there probably being none of the original wild species 

 of these groups now living, except those which have been 

 more or less completely subjugated by man, and then have 

 returned to the wilderness. The fact is, that with any large 

 mammal the domestication of the species tends to bring 

 about the destruction of the remaining wild forms. If we 

 go back in fancy to the time when the dog was taken 

 in from the wilderness, we readily perceive how certainly 

 the subjugated individuals would have mingled with their 

 wild kindred, so that either the wild would have become 

 tame or vice versa. The same incompatibility which exists 

 between slavery and freedom in our own species in any 

 given territory may be said to hold in the case of captive 

 animals. It is particularly on this account that I am dis- 

 posed to think that our races of dogs have been derived 

 from one or more original species of truly canine ancestors, 

 the wild forms of which have long since disappeared from 

 the earth. 



Although there are no species of wild dogs now in exist- 

 ence to which we can refer the orio-in of our household friends, 



