40 DOGS. Chap. I. 



precautioiiS to prevent a cross, but he never sncceeded, though 

 this was only the second generation in India, in obtaining 

 a single young dog like its parents in size or make ; their 

 nostrils were more contracted, their noses more pointed, their 

 size inferior, and their limbs more slender. So again on the 

 coast of Guinea, dogs, according to Bosnian, •' alter strangely ; 

 their ears grow long and stiff like those of foxes, to which 

 colour they also incline, so that in three or four years, they 

 degenerate into very ugly creatures ; and in three or four 

 broods their barking txirns into a howl." '^ This remarkable 

 tendency to rapid deterioration in European dogs subjected 

 to the climate of India and Africa, may be largely accounted 

 for by reversion to a primordial condition which many animals 

 exhibit, as we shall hereafter see, when their constitutions 

 are in any way disturbed. 



Some of the peculiarities characteristic of the several breeds 

 of the dog have probably arisen suddenly, and, though strictly 

 inherited, maybe called monstrosities ; for instance, the shape 

 of the legs and body in the turnspit of Europe and India ; 

 the shape of the head and the under-hanging jaw in the bull- 

 and pug-dog, so alike in this one respect and so unlike in all 

 others. A peculiarity suddenly arising, and therefore in one 

 sense deserving to be called a monstrosity, may, however, be 

 increased and fixed by man's selection. We can hardly doubt 

 that long-continued training, as with the greyhound in 

 coursing hares, as with water-dogs in swimming — and the 

 want of exercise, in the case of lapdogs — must have produced 

 some direct effect on their structure and instincts. But we 

 shall immediately see that the most potent cause of change 

 has probably been the selection, both methodical and uncon- 

 scious, of slight individual differences, — the latter kind of 

 selection resulting from the occasional preservation, dxiring 

 hundreds of generations, of those individual dogs which were 

 ih.e most useful to man for certain purposes and under certain 

 conditions of life. In a future chapter on Selection I shall 

 show that even barbarians attend closely to the qualities of 

 their dogs. This unconscious selection by man would be aided 



'8 A. Murray gives this passage in his ' Geographical Distribution of Mammals, 

 4to, 1866, p. 8. 



