ORIGIN OF THE DOG. 



lOb 



SKULL OF DOMESTIC DOC 



mountains and hills peculiarly appropriated for the interment of the people. It is looked upon as a 



capital crime not only to kill them, but barely to insult and treat them ill; and no one but the legal 



proprietor is allowed so much as to correct any of them. 



All this reverence and respect are owing to a celestial 



constellation which the Japanese call the Dog, under the 



influence whereof the aforesaid Emperor of Japan was 



bom. " 



By most people the Dog is valued only during his 

 life ; his skin is not particularly valuable, and his flesh is 

 little esteemed. This is by no means, however, the case 

 everywhere. It is well known that the Chinese use the 

 Dog as a regular article of food. Many of the North 

 American tribes look upon an entree of Dog as the 

 greatest possible bonne bouche they can set before a 

 stranger. Sir Leopold McClintock relates that, in the 

 Sandwich Islands, he had most profuse apologies offered to 



him because there was no puppy to be had for a feast to which he was invited. The Eskimo, too, 

 look upon a dish of young Dog as a great treat ; and it is related that a Danish captain provided hi i 

 friends with a feast of this kind, and when they praised his mutton, sent for the skin of the beast, and 

 exhibited it to them ! The Greeks and Romans also used the Dog as an article of diet, and many 

 ancient writers, such as Galen and Hippocrates, represent Dog-meat as a highly desirable dish. 



It is a remarkable circumstance, when we come to consider the probable origin of the Dog, 

 that there is evidence of his domestication at such early periods, and by so many savage tribes in 

 different parts of the world. As we have already seen, tame Dogs were possessed by savages in the 

 neolithic, or newer stone period, by the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and the ancient 

 inhabitants of North and South America, to say nothing of the numerous savage tribes at the present 

 day, such as the Australians and the inhabitants of Guiana. Now the important question arises, had 

 all these Dogs a common origin 1 Did the great neolithic Dog, the Sheep-dog of Job's time, the Grey- 

 hounds, Turnspits, and Hounds of the Assyrians and Greeks, the divinely-honoured animals of Peru, 

 and the supposed ancestors of the Eskimo and the Chippeways, spring from a single pair ? or have 

 various wild species of Canidce been tamed and converted into true domestic Dogs, by different people 

 in different parts of the world, these various species having since been crossed and re-crossed with one 

 another and with their parent forms, until a species has been produced as complex in its origin as the 

 English nation, which has flowing in its veins the blood of ancient Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, 

 Dane, Norman, and Fleming] 



Until recently it was thought that all the evidence which could be brought to bear on the matter 

 pointed to a separate origin of the Dog. It was argued, for instance, that as we have evidences of distinct 

 breeds existing in far-back periods of the world's history, there was actually no time, prior to those 



periods, for him to have diverged from a savage ancestor, such as a Wolf or 

 a Jackal. It was also thought highly unlikely that a number of primitive 

 races of man should have separately tamed different wild Canidce. Mr. 

 Youatt, one of our best authorities on the Dog, writing in 1845, says : 

 "This power of tracing back the Dog to the very earliest periods of 

 history, and the fact that he then seemed to be as sagacious, as faithful, 

 and as valuable as at the present day, strongly favours the opinion that 

 he descended from no inferior and comparatively worthless animal ; that 

 he was not the progeny of the Wolf, the Jackal, or the Fox ; but he was 

 originally created, somewhat as we now find him, the associate and friend 

 of man." 



A few years ago there was no gainsaying arguments such as these, for then nearly everybody 

 believed that the world was literally only six thousand years old, and that species were absolutely 

 unchangeable. But Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Darwin have change tout cela." The argument from 

 time fails utterly, and other facts have to be taken into consideration. 



SKULL OF YOUXG DOG. 



