6 PROF. B. C. A. WINDLE AND MR. J. HUMPHREYS [Jail. 14, 



deterred us from proceeding further in our enquiry had not the 

 Professor courteously and kindly encouraged us to pursue our in- 

 vestigations. Besides a number of skulls which we have procured 

 ourselves we have examined those in the following collections : — 

 The Natural History Department of the British Museum ; the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, London ; the Universities of Oxford, 

 Cambridge, and Dublin : and the Museum of Science and Art in the 

 last-named city. We have to express our thanks to the following 

 gentlemen for their kind assistance in this matter : — Mr. Oldfield 

 Thomas, Professor Charles Stewart, Dr. Arthur Thomson ; Professors 

 Alexander Macalister, H. W. Macintosh, and A. C. Haddon. It is 

 right to mention that the very numerous calculations required for 

 the preparation of the tables have been worked out by Mrs. Windle. 



In dealing with our subject we have been confronted with two 

 chief difficulties. In the first place, it was originally our hope and 

 intention to have dealt with the origin of the races of the domestic 

 dog, but a short experience of the literature of the subject showed 

 this to be an impossibility on this occasion at least. The literature 

 of the subject would require the devotion of years before any 

 satisfactory results could be hoped for. We have therefore been 

 regretfully obliged to confine ourselves to some scattered references 

 to the opinions of the chief writers on the subject, whether as regards 

 the derivation of the race as a whole or of certain varieties from one 

 another. 



In the second place, the difficulty of determining the limits of 

 breeds or varieties of dogs, and still more that of deciding whether 

 a given museum-specimen is that of a so-called " pure-bred " animal 

 or even of absolutely defining what is a "pure-bred animal," 

 is one which will be readily comprehended by anyone who is even 

 superficially acquainted with the ways of canine fanciers. Anyone 

 taking the trouble to look through the pages of ' Stonehenge,' for 

 example, will not fail to realize that fanciers have exercised their 

 ingenuity in many directions upon most of the commoner breeds of 

 dogs, and by no means always on the same lines. This fact is, 

 doubtless, sufficient to account for the striking discrepancies and 

 differences which, as will be seen from the tables, exist amongst dogs 

 of the same variety. 



As an example, it may be stated that in few is this more the 

 case than in that of the Bull-dogs, and yet the skulls included in 

 this table are nearly all specially vouched for as being those of ex- 

 ceptionally purely-bred individuals. We can only state that, so far 

 as we have been able, we have included in the tables only such 

 animals as apparently might be with reason described as " pure- 

 bred." 



In the first part of this paper will be found the measurements of 

 the various specimens examined, reduced to terms of the basi-cranial 

 axis in each case, with averages, arranged in a tabular form. 



