4 KENNEL SECRETS. 



The evidence to sustain this argument, which appears 

 on anatomical investigation, merely shows that he is and 

 has been fitted for flesh eating. And admitting him to 

 be physically so constituted as to be able to derive from 

 an exclusively animal diet all that is necessary to his 

 support and health, he can scarcely be regarded now as 

 other than omnivorous, or in other words as capable 

 of subsisting on a varied diet made up of vegetable 

 and animal substances, as on one entirely animal. 



Many centuries have passed since he was redeemed, 

 and in all these he has been the companion and friend of 

 man. Sharing as he has the mixed diet of his master he 

 surely must have felt the force of habit, to which no 

 animal can be insensible, and acquired at least a tolerance 

 for vegetable foods if not an actual need of them. It is 

 by virtue of this force that man becomes so truly om- 

 nivorous ; and that inferior animals can do the same 

 abundant evidence has been offered in the results of 

 experiments, which have shown that in respect to food 

 changes in their nature have been effected and even 

 hereditary forms of body suited to the altered conditions 

 induced and perpetuated. Cats, for instance, have accom- 

 modated themselves to a mixed diet and become similar 

 in form to the herbivorous or vegetable-eating animals by 

 considerable increase in length of their bowels over other 

 members of their family yet untamed. 



It is certainly not reasonable to suppose that this power 

 to accommodate to altered conditions in the matter of diet 

 and to assimilate their forms is denied all animals but cats. 

 Far from it, it is easier to believe that it can be acquired 

 by all v;arm-blood animals, and that many of them that 

 are now either purely flesh-eaters or vegetable-eaters 

 would become omnivorous had they wits to aid them 

 or were they educated up to the changes. 



