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INTRODUCTION. 19 
differ only in their mode of acknowledgment, from 
the expressions of favour with which the drover, 
the shepherd, the sportsman, and the fine lady of 
civilized society regard them. 
As the dog alone, of all the brute creation, volun- 
tarily associates himself with the conditions of man’s 
existence, it is fair to presume also that he was the 
first and therefore the oldest of man’s companions ; 
that to his manifold good qualities the first hunters 
were indebted for their conquest and subjugation of 
other species. We do even now perceive, notwith- 
standing the advance of human reason and the pro- 
gress of invention, that in a thousand instances we 
cannot dispense with his assistance. 
If we still feel the importance of his services in 
our state of society, what must have been the ad- 
miration of man, when in the earliest period of 
patriarchal life he was so much nearer to a state 
of nature? When the wild hunter first beheld the 
joyous eyes of his voluntary associate, and heard 
his native howl modulated into barking; when he 
first perceived it assuming tones of domestication fit 
to express a masters purposes, and intonate the 
language which we still witness cattle, sheep, and 
even ducks and hawks learn to understand: What 
exultation must he have felt when, with the aid of 
his new friend, he was enabled to secure and do- 
mesticate the first kid, the first lamb of the moun- 
tain race! When, with greater combinations of 
force and skill between man and his dogs, the bull, 
the buffalo, the camel, the wild ass, and then the 
