INTRODUCTION. 89 
Or in the case noticed by Mr Hodgson at Katman- 
doo, where his experiments proved the Capra tharal* 
and domestic goat to breed together without difi- 
culty. Are we thence to conclude that the musmon 
and the ibex, the tharal and the domestic goat, are 
mere varieties of one species ? 
Almost all recent writers on dogs have copied 
one another so repeatedly, that it is scarcely possible 
to trace the original authority whence given state- 
ments of facts have been taken. We cannot there- 
fore refer to the text whence Mr Bell drew his 
conclusions ; that there exist “ several different in- 
stances of dogs in such a state of wildness as to 
have lost even that common character of domestica- 
tion,—variety of colour and marking ;” naming as 
examples the Dhole of India, the Dingo of Aus- 
tralia, a half reclaimed race of North America, and 
another partially tamed in South America. Now, 
if the source whence this statement be derived is 
the Supplement to the Carnassiers of Mr Grifhth’s 
English edition of Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom, we 
may state that it is from one of our own notes, and 
that the words are, in part at least, those we used ; 
but it certainly was not, in the original, intended to 
decide the question, whether these animals were 
specifically distinct,—wild aborigine, or the descend- 
ants of domestic dogs. The writer of the article 
used his own discretion; and even he placed it in 
* This name must not be confounded with the C. Jaela, 
Ham. Smith.—No. 869 of Griffith’s An. Kingd. 
