50 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



suggest that those who seek this end should select some of 

 the primitive types of form, such as are found among the 

 undifferentiated mass of the species, those which are improp- 

 erly termed mongrels, and this for the reason that among 

 these unselected creatures the intelligence is quicker and 

 more varied than it is in the highly developed varieties. 

 Under skilful trainers the successive generations bred in the 

 experimental station should be subjected to tests which will 

 indicate the measure of intellectual ability. The results 

 already attained by the unconscious selection which man has 

 applied serve to indicate that at the end of a century, and 

 perhaps in much less time, we might develop an animal 

 which in various ways would come to a closer intellectual 

 relation with man than any other lower species has attained. 



Cats deserve some mention for the reason, that, while they 

 are the least essential, and on the whole the least interesting, 

 of domesticated animals, they have had a certain place in 

 civilization. They afford, moreover, a capital foil by which to 

 set off the virtues of the dog. Nowhere else, indeed, among 

 the creatures which are intimately associated with men, do we 

 find two related forms which afford, along with a certain like- 

 ness, such great diversities of quality. 



We know nothing as to the time when the cat first found 

 its way to the associations of man. Presumably this period 

 was much later than the advent of the dog into the human 

 family. The presumption rests upon the fact that while the 

 doe does not demand fixed residence as a condition of its 

 fealty, but is at home wherever his master is, the cat is the 

 creature of the domicile, caring more indeed for its dwelling- 

 place than it ever does for the inmates thereof. In a word, 

 the creature must have come to us after our forefathers gave 



