24 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DOG. 



ness, while he was herding his father's asses." While 

 herding his father's asses, if my. reading be correct, they 

 were, doubtless, visited by a drove of wild coursers ; inter- 

 course was the consequence, and mules the ultimate result, 

 a valuable acquisition, doubtless, to the ass, but still not 

 half so valuable as the domestication of so useful an animal 

 as the dog would have been. 



In the latter part of the Book of Genesis, we find Jacob, 

 when blessing his sons, employing the ferocity of the wolf as 

 a familiar simile. In the account of the departure of the 

 Israelites from Egypt an event which occurred about two 

 hundred years afterwards we find the dog familiarly men- 

 tioned, and his watchful powers and barking clearly re- 

 cognised as things of course. " Nor shall a dog open his 

 mouth." I am aware that some may deduce from this very 

 circumstance the opinion that the dog was only a reclaimed 

 wolf, unknown to the world until the period of the Jews' 

 sojourn in Egypt ; and that the Egyptians, eminent as they 

 were for art and invention, had, among other acquisitions, 

 achieved that of the domestication of the wolf, and his con- 

 version into a dog ; I shall not admit any such induction, 

 however. After the flood, and at the dispersion of the pro- 

 jectors of the tower of Babel, the world lost many arts and 

 other acquisitions that they before possessed : the Egyptians 

 were, as far as history can inform us, the first to form them- 

 selves into a nation, after that event, and to cultivate the arts 

 and sciences, or rather, perhaps, to revive former known, but 

 long-neglected studies, 



It is to the Egyptians, contrary indeed to popular opinion, 

 but no less certainly, that we owe the possession of the 

 horse, and it is likely to them also that we owe that of the 

 dog ; this, however, does not prove that these animals were 

 not previously in a domesticated state, before the flood and 

 the subsequent confusion of tongues at Babel had produced 

 so many striking changes, and thrown so many valuable 

 branches of knowledge into the gulf of oblivion. 



The few graphic touches with which Solomon, in Proverbs 

 xxx. 31, by a compound epithet, like those in Homer, has 

 described a renowned and noble animal, translated " a grey- 

 hound," invite special notice, in addition to their appropriate- 

 ness, from the recollection of that celebrated monarch's 

 fame for knowledge of God's works, as has been record- 

 ed in 1 Kings, iv. 33 " And he spake of trees, from the 

 cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even to the hyssop that spring. 



