HISTOxl OF THE DOG. 99 



shows the most constant and untiring kindness and attention, would without hesitation name the 

 humble Carnivore rather than the arrogant and self-asserting Primate. It was not his servants who 

 recognised Ulysses on his return from his long voyage ; it was not even his faithful Penelope ; it was 

 the old Dog Argus, who 



" soon as he perceived 



Long-lost Ulysses nigh, down fell his ears 



Clapp'd close, and with his tail glad sign he gave 



Of gratulation, impotent to rise 



And to approach his master as of old." 



"Where shall we find an instance of human devotion, unaltered and unalterable by death, greater than 

 that recorded by our great Lake poet of the Dog whose ill-fated master was killed in passing 



Helyellyn? 



*' The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, 

 Eepeating the same timid cry, 

 This Dog had been through three months' space, 

 A dweller in that savage place. 

 Yes, proof was plain, that since the day 

 On which the traveller thus had died, 

 The Dog had watched about the spot, 

 Or by his master's side. 



How nourished here through such long cioia. 

 He knows who gave that love sublime, 

 And gave that strength of feeling, great 

 Above all human estimate." 



No animal has been so universally or so thoroughly domesticated as the Dog ; in none have the 

 moral and intellectual faculties been so largely developed; and there is certainly none which the human 

 race could so ill spare. We might possibly, with a proper amount of practice, become vegetarians, and 

 so do without our sheep and cattle, our pigs and poultry. The Cat we might easily dispense with, 

 for she is, after all, a very passive sort of creature, and rarely "condescends to express either emotion or 

 affection, whatever her feelings may be ; but to lose the Dog would be to lose a friend, and a friend so 

 faithful and true that his loss would be a veritable plucking out of the right eye and a cutting off of 

 the right hand. As Mr. Darwin observes : " It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has 

 become instinctive in the dog," which it can hardly be said to have done, as yet, in man ! 



Wherever man of any degree of civilisation is found, there the Dog is to be found too every- 

 where invaluable, though often grossly and brutally ill-treated. In all probability, too, Dogs occur as 

 true natives in all parts of the world, except in the Australian region Australia, New Zealand, and the 

 surrounding islands ; in these places he has, in all probability, been introduced by man. 



The likeness of the domestic Dog to his more immediate relatives is very close. Except in the 

 want of obliquity in the eyes, and in the curling of the tail, so different to the straight " brush" of a 

 Wolf or wild Dog, there is really no definite character which can be given as separating Canisfamiliaris 

 from the wild species of the genus. Moreover, the difference between the varieties of the Dog itself is 

 so great, that it is impossible to frame anything like a good definition which will include the Bulldog, 

 the Greyhound, the Newfoundland, and the Terrier, and, at the same time, exclude the Dingo and 

 the Buansu. The one constant difference is the habit of barking, " which is almost universal with 

 domesticated Dogs, and which does not characterise a single natural species of the family." 



The Dog certainly took its origin at a very remote period, for we find undoubted evidence of his 

 existence and regular domestication in the very earliest records. Among the early Hebrews, he seems 

 to have been unknown, or rather, despised ; and it strikes one as a most remarkable circumstance that 

 this astute nation of shepherds should never have domesticated so useful an assistant. Possibly this 

 is partly owing to the prejudice the grand old Theists of Palestine must have felt against an animal 

 held in great veneration as an emblem of the Divine Being by the idolatrous Egyptians ; and yet 

 this objection can hardly have had much weight, as the Hebrews kept Oxen, animals which were 

 regularly worshipped by the Egyptians. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the Dog is 

 spoken of with scorn and contempt as " an unclean beast," so that probably the Israelites had 



