THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 267 
superior in mental endowment, genial qualities, and 
general adaptiveness to all others. Yet the qualities 
which make the dog valuable to us now formed no 
part of its original character; it is valuable chiefly 
for its various instinctive tendencies, and these are 
a later growth and purely the result of individual 
spontaneous variations, and of man’s unconscious 
selection. The dog’s affection for his master—the 
anxiety to be constantly with and to be noticed 
and caressed by him, the impatience at his absence 
and grief at his loss, and the courage to defend him 
and his house and his belongings from strangers— 
‘this affection of which we are accustomed to think 
so highly, regarding it as something unique in 
Nature, is in reality a very small and a very low 
thing; and by low is here meant common in the 
animal world, for it exists in a great many, prob- 
ably in a large majority, of mammalian brains in 
every order and every family. Nor is it confined 
to mammalians. The duck does not occupy a 
distinguished place in the scale of being, and the 
lame duck that attached itself to Mr. Caxton, and 
affectionately followed him up and down in his 
walk, might seem an exceptionally gifted bird to 
those who know little of animal life. It is of 
course here assumed that Bulwer did not invent 
the lame duck: a peacock or bird of paradise, 
with all its organs complete, would have suited his 
fancy better. Probably the incident—for such 
incidents are very common—was told to him as 
true, and thinking that it would give a touch of 
