CHAPTER XII. 

 HABITS AND HAIR OF CARNIVORES. 



Dogs. 



Among the canidse one is able to select a type with whose habits 



of life we are more familiar than any other, Canis Familiaris, as 



he is affectionately called, the companion of man his master, and 



faithful guardian— often unto death. Professor Scott Elliott 



gives reason to think that the dog was the first animal tamed by 



man, and that he was descended from some wild jackal -like form, 



probably crossed by the wolf. The dog is then aptly called by 



Huxley, the brother of the wolf, who has been changed by the 



intelligence of man into the guardian of the flock. It seems that 



in his rudimentary stage of domestication he was an unofficial 



scavenger among the habitations of neolithic man, as the pariah 



is in the East to-day, and that little acts of kindness towards his 



offspring on the part of those early men and women were the first 



dawnings of a friendship of thousands of years. It is a long story 



from the slinking jackal to the bloodhound, mastiff, St. Bernard, 



staghound, collie and terrier of to-day, and one which reflects 



much credit on both parties to this friendship, just as do those other 



long friendships between servant and master, of which we still see 



a few examples. Living with us as he does the dog and his habits 



of life are an open book ; he is then all the better for my humble 



purpose here. I would refer again to the curious use of the gender 



which we unconsciously apply to the dog. It is no longer " she," 



but "he." When a dog is looking a little unfriendly how we 



always try to wheedle him with " Poor old fellow," and so on, 



as a matter of course, assuming his masculine character. James 



Payn pointed out once a little point which proves how good a 



comrade we have in the dog, when he reminds us of the cautious 



approach we usually make to a cat, and the " hail-fellow-well-met " 



tone we adopt towards the dog, rolling him over and using kindly 



opprobious terms, such as friends among schoolboys hurl at one 



another when they are on the best of terms. A fox-terrier is, 



perhaps, the most human of all the numerous types evolved through 



the skill of man, and it is a smooth -coated specimen of this variety 



which I will examine now as to what his hairy coat can tell us of 



his habits. 



