Chap. I. THEIE I'AEENTAGE. 29 



parent-species. One fact, however, with respect to the colouring of 

 domestic dogs, I at one time hoped might have thrown some light 

 on their oi'igin ; and it is worth giving, as showing how colouring 

 follows laws, even in so anciently and thoroughly domesticated an 

 animal as the dog. Black dogs with iin-coloured feet, whatever 

 breed they may belong to, almost invariably have a tan-coloured 

 spot on the upper and inner corners of each eye, and their lips are 

 generally thus coloured. I have seen only two exceptions to this 

 rule, namely, in a spaniel and terrier. Dogs of a light-brown 

 colour often have a lighter, yellowish-brown spot over the eyes ; 

 sometimes the spot is white, and in a mongrel terrier the spot was 

 black. Mr. Waring kindly examined for me a stud of fifteen grey- 

 hounds in Suffolk : eleven of them were black, or black and white, 

 or brindled, and these had no eye-spots; but three were red and 

 one slaty-blue, and these four had dark-coloured spots over their 

 eyes. Although the spots thus sometimes differ in colour, they 

 strongly tend to be tan-coloured ; this is proved by my having seen 

 four spaniels, a setter, two Yorkshire shepherd dogs, a large 

 mongrel, and some fox-hounds, coloured black and white, with not 

 a trace of tan-colour, excepting the spots over the eyes, and some- 

 times a little on the feet. These latter cases, and many others, 

 show plainly that the colour of the feet and the eye-spots are in 

 some way correlated. I have noticed, in various breeds, every 

 gradation, from the whole face being tan-coloured, to a complete 

 ring round the eyes, to a minute spot over the inner and ujiper 

 corners. The sj^ots occur in various sub-breeds of terriers and 

 spaniels ; in setters ; in hounds of various kinds, including the 

 turnspit-like German badger-hound ; in shepherd dogs ; in a 

 mongrel, of which neither parent had the spots ; in one pure bull- 

 dog, though the spots were in this case almost white ; and in grey- 

 hounds, — but true black-and-tan greyhounds are excessively rare ; 

 nevertheless I have been assured by Mr. Warwick, that one ran at 

 the Caledonian Champion meeting of April 1860, and was " marked 

 precisely like a black-and-tan terrier." This dog, or another exactly 

 the same colour, ran at the Scottish National Club on the 21st of 

 March, 1865 ; and I hear from Mr. C. M. Browne, that " there was 

 no reason either on the sire or dam side for the appearance of this 

 unusual colour." Mr. Swinhoe at my request looked at the dogs in 

 China, at Amoy, and he soon noticed a brown dog with yellow 

 spots over the eyes. Colonel H. Smith '"' figures the magnificent 

 black mastiff of Thibet with a tan-coloured stripe over the eyes, 

 feet, and chaps ; and what is more singular, he figures the Alco, or 

 native domestic dog of Mexico, as black and white, with narrow 

 tan-coloured rings round the eyes ; at the Exhibition of dogs in 

 London, May 18G3, a so-called forest dog from North- West Mexico 

 was shown, which had pale tan-coloured spots over the eyes. The 

 occurrence of these tan-colom-ed spots in dogs of such extremely 



•The Naturalist Library,' Dogs, vol. x. bd. 4 19. 



