L92 V ERTEBRATA. 



limited in his range. The wild or Bemi-savage dogs, as the ESsqnimanx, for instance, are, with few 



s, afraid of wolves, and fly from them in terror, as if governed by an instinctive aversion. 



i re is a permanent and universal difference in the manner of carrying the tail, that of the dog 



being curled more "r less upward and over the back, while that of the wolf is uniformly low and 



Tin' d "TV variety shows a natural disposition to guard property, either his 



own or that of hi* master; he is an instinctive sentinel on guard, especially at ni^ht — a trait of 



character not poss — 1 by the wolf. 



k is well known that the form of the pupil of the eye is a characteristic of species; in the horse 

 ! . in the cat linear, in the dog and wolf it is round. This fact has been appealed to as 

 evidence "( the identity of the two animals. But the reply is, that man, and many other crea- 

 -. have the round pupil. This, therefore, affords no proof. Two things may, however, be as- 

 . which seem to go far to settle this question. The eye of the wolf is oblique, and always 

 remains so. Th.re are many races of wild dogs, none of which have ever acquired this character] 

 In fact, 9 uo wolf, to our knowledge, has ever become a dog, so no dog has ever become a wolf. 

 The difficulty, not to say impossibility, of considering the wolf as the parent of the dog, has Led 

 -. some hold the jackal to be the progenitor of the dog race, while others 

 sider this animal I the civilized dog relapsed into barbarism. As these are mere 



without proofs, they may safely be dismiss -1 as unworthy of serious consideration. It 

 well known, that the jackal has a natural odor which is very offensive, and must ever 

 havi ted him from becoming the favorite of man. 



S me have imagined the dog to be the offspring of the fox, but this is contradicted by the fact 



that the pupil of the cy< — which, a- before remarked, is a permanent and characteristic index to 



and vertical in the f. >\ as in the cat. It may be further added on this point) 



that, while the coi - - ol' the blood of the dog — as in most other mammalia — are circular, 



iu the fox they are oval. 



Anotl »n is. that the dog is a cross between two or more members of the family of 



Cani . - between a wolf and jackal, or the jackal and fox, or perhaps the result of a wider 



mixture - and varieties. It i- easy to see that all this is contrary to the analogy of nature, 



which, although it pre- ts -with permanent varieties — as is exemplified in various animal-, and 



the dog himself — never creates a prominent anil permanent type, having the character of a 



-. by means of a mixture of other sp 5, We may add that the fact already state 1. of 



: . 3 of wild dogs, renders any such explanation alike unneec-sary and absurd. 



It mat: whether tin— races are descendants of an original stock that has remained in their 



ite from the beginning, or whether they are the offspring of domestical d bn 



ss : the inference is the same. Just as we know that the wild horse ot 

 h America and Texas had a horse for his father — even though he may have been a 

 ted animal — so we may infer that the wild dogs of India hail dogs for their parents. 

 In order t<- understand the full force of this reasoning let us turn to the accounts which 

 tra\ a of these animals. The dog of the Deccan, called by the Mahrattas K 



.'. where it i- called Buansu. Its head is elongated and com; 

 - iblique, the pupils round, their hides brown. The ears are long, erect, and somewhat 

 the top, and the limbs are large and strong. It is of a rufous brown color, and hunts 

 3 in packs of fifty to sixty. Ithasa rse, ill-natured expression, but 

 it i- ntical with the wolf; it ha- not even a very close resemblance cither to the wolf, fox. 



_ ; i it has pecnliariti --ruction, which we shall hereafter notice, no 



_ . I hesital or a moment to say it was a dog, and nothing el- . Nor i- this the 



_- : there are many others, more or I -- i sembling this, and whether w< 

 r them 2 oal races, or a- descendants of breeds broken loose from domesticity, tin 



-that tl. 2 - a permanent and independent type, and not the mere hybrid 

 If • any admissible qualification of this conclusion, we conceive it to be 



this . and probably are, certain dogs in existence, which have some 



d their reins, either from crossings of the wolf, or fox, or jackal, or a part, or all 

 togcl r. The .-1, 3 of such animals, in particular instances, may be more or less _ 1 by 



