DOGS. 123 



of force and skill between man and his dogs, the bull, the 

 buffalo, the camel, the wild ass, and then the horse, were com- 

 pelled to accept his yoke 5 and, finally, when, with the same 

 assistance, the wild boar was tamed, the lion repelled, and even 

 attacked with success. Although the total development of canine 

 education must have been the work of ages, yet that it was 

 very early of great acknowledged importance, is attested by 

 the prominent station assigned to the dog in the earliest 

 theologies of Paganism. 



" But if these animals were thus early an object of deep felt 

 interest, we are naturally led to ask the question,- * whence 

 dogs originated ? For, as there must have been a period when 

 that species, or the genus whence the domestic races have 

 sprung, were in a state of nature, the original and typical kind 

 is to be sought in existing wild dogs, or their real progenitors 

 have totally disappeared. In the present state of our knowledge 

 on this particular subject, no reply can be made which is wholly 

 free from objections. The oldest records represent the dogs 

 then noticed, though they were less educated, as not very dis- 

 similar in natural qualities from the present races ; for, referring 

 to the most ancient authorities (if we except a passage in 

 Aristotle, attesting the co-existence of wild and domesticated 

 animals in his time in Europe, among which the dog is enume- 

 rated ; and another in Pliny, acknowledging that there were no 

 domesticated animals then to be found which had not their 

 counterparts in a wild state) j writers of the classic period seem 

 not to have bestowed much real attention on the question. 



" We leave it to physiologists to inform us of the facts, if such 

 there be, in the whole circle of mammalious animals, where the 

 influence of man, by education and servitude, has been able to 

 develope and combine faculties and anatomical forms so different 

 and opposite as we see them in different races of dogs, unless 

 the typical races were first in possession of their rudiments. 

 We do not pretend to deny a certain influence to education, even 

 on the external form j and to servitude and misery that dege- 

 neracy which will produce some corresponding decrease of size. 



