NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DOG. 23 



most naturalists, I must admit, have peremptorily decided to 

 the contrary. I would, for my own part, venture so far as 

 to say that, let it be once granted that the dog was formed 

 prophetically by the Creator in order that he might be the 

 friend and assistant of man, after the fall should have de- 

 prived him of the allegiance of other animals, it is scarcely 

 too much to suppose that two varieties were then formed. 

 One would scarcely seem sufficient for the purpose, while two 

 might have been so ; and by their intermixture and subse- 

 quent breeding, we can readily imagine how the other races 

 might have been produced. I may add that this view is in 

 strict accordance with the divisions into which osteological 

 investigation, and more particularly examination of their skulls, 

 resolve the many varieties of dog with which we are now ac- 

 quainted. I do not, however, see any necessity for insisting 

 on this point I merely throw out the suggestion. No one 

 can contradict it, neither have we any means of satisfactorily 

 establishing it. An impenetrable veil of mystery hangs over 

 the origin of the dog, that I much fear will never be removed 

 until time itself shall be no more, and we shall become ac- 

 quainted with this amongst other, and, for the present abstruse 

 and dark, mysteries of nature. 



CHAPTER II. 







EARLY HISTORY OF THE DOG. 



THAT the dog was one of those animals that did not, at the 

 " fall," swerve from their allegiance, but maintained their 

 fidelity to man, can scarcely be questioned. The earlier 

 portions of the sacred writings make frequent mention of 

 him, but ever as a settled, domestic animal, as one that had 

 ever been so from the beginning, and never once hint at his 

 having been reclaimed from a wild state. Had he been so 

 reclaimed, I have no doubt but it would have been noticed, 

 for a far less important event is actually recorded viz., the 

 discovery of the mode of breeding the mule ; it is only fair, 

 at the same time, to acknowledge that some translators read 

 this word " warm springs," and not mules. We are told 

 that this was that " Anah that found the mules in the wilder- 



