CONCLUSION. 749 ' 



of this animal has been pursued to the degree of shewing 

 that it involves many subjects of curiosity and interest. Of 

 all the animals that have been subjected to our power, the 

 Dog is that whose condition and faculties we have the best 

 means of observing. No creature more distinctly shews the 

 power of external agents to affect the form of the body, and 

 react upon the attributes which, even in the lower animals, 

 we may term mental. The Dog, we have seen, when inured 

 to the exercise of certain muscular powers, acquires, within 

 given limits, the conformation of parts which adapts him to 

 the services to which he is habituated. The Sledge-dog of 

 the Laplander becomes fitted for tasks under which other 

 dogs would perish ; while a dog of the same descent, used 

 only for the care of flocks, becomes the common Shepherd's 

 Dog. The Bull-dog acquires the powerful jaws, and short 

 limbs, which fit him for subduing the animal to which he is 

 opposed, and with this conformation, he assumes the fierce- 

 ness and resolution which such a service demands. The 

 Greyhound, inured to the chase of the mountain stag, ac- 

 quires and maintains a robuster form than the dog of the 

 same race, used to the chase of the feebler game. The Dog 

 habituated to the destruction of the wolf, when withdrawn 

 from this pursuit, loses by degrees the strength and courage 

 which formerly characterised his race ; and dogs of every 

 sort, which are not required to exercise their muscular 

 powers, but are reared up as playthings in an artificial state, 

 become so diminutive and feeble, that they could not exist 

 were they not continually protected by us. We cannot ima- 

 gine that a creature so helpless as a pug-dog could exist in 

 the state of nature ; nor can we assign any other cause for 

 its having become what it is, than the progressive adapta- 

 tion of its race to the artificial condition in which it has 

 been reared. Such effects, indeed, are not proper to the dog, 

 but have been observed in the case of all the animals which 

 we have subjected to domestication. They are seen even in 

 some of the lower orders. Thus, certain little fishes of the 



