Some Poets Dogs. 307 



has varied from its original types with such extraordinary 

 ingenuity that it would now be very difficult indeed to 

 resolve the different species of Europe into their primal 

 elements or to refer each to its old wild-brier stock. 



I do not say it would be impossible, for I have myself 

 seen so many transition-varieties between the bona fide 

 " wild dog " — the tiger-hunting pack of the Indian jungles 

 — and the thoroughly civilised animal, that I have no doubt 

 that if travellers put their experiences together, the exist- 

 ence of most of our dogs, with their present special char- 

 acteristics in full development, could be traced back to 

 the remotest ages. Thus, long before white men went to 

 North America, the Red Indians had possessed the grey- 

 hound ; the dames of old Mexico centuries ago cherished 

 curly-haired lap-dogs ; the villagers of the Himalayas 

 guarded their hill-paths in the Vedic days with ferocious 

 thick-coated shepherd-dogs ; Nineveh borrowed the mastiflf 

 from Egypt — and Egypt from " Accadia." 



I yield to no one in my honourable and affectionate 

 regard for the dog. But I place it far below man ; for 

 man, I contend, made the dog, and I agree with him who 

 says that '* man is the Providence of the dog." The sagacity, 

 fidehty, and disinterested, passionate attachments of the 

 dog are such old facts that the person who would disbelieve 

 in them can hardly be imagined; and for myself, I am 

 almost afraid to think of the dog's possibilities in intelli- 

 gence and affection, if its life were only commensurate with 

 our own. Yet granting all this, Talways find myself resent- 

 ing the irrational infatuation of dog enthusiasts, and being 

 thus apprehensive of the excesses of others, am perhaps 

 inclined to weigh out the measure of my own admiration 

 with too exact a hand. For a margin of eulogy is excusable 

 for an animal that without reason learns in its short span 

 of years so nearly to simulate it ; that without inherited 

 data evolves from its own perceptions such an admirable 



