272 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
its mind is, and ever will be, what it was when, 
thousands of years ago, some compassionate woman 
took the pup her owner threw into her arms, and 
reared it, suckling it perhaps at her own breast; 
and when in after days it followed at the heels of 
its savage master and astonished him by assisting 
in the capture of his quarry. 
It is not, then, the dog’s intelligence, which is 
less than that of many other species, and is non- 
progressive in spite of all that training and selection 
ean do, which makes it valuable to us. Nor has 
it any advantage over other species in those 
qualities of affection, fidelity, and good temper 
about which we hear so much rapturous language; 
for these things are lower down than reason and 
exist throughout the mammalian world, in animals 
high and low, little and big, from the harvest mouse 
to the hippopotamus. The dog is more valuable 
to us than other species because we have got him. 
We inherited him and were thereby saved a large 
amount of trouble. Fle is tame; the others are 
wild. His intellect is small and stationary, but his 
structure is variable, and, more important still, so 
are his instincts; or perhaps it would be more 
correct to say that new propensities, which often 
prove hereditary, and which by selection and 
training may be fixed and strengthened until they 
are made to resemble instincts, are of frequent 
occurrence in him. The more or less settled pro- 
pensities in our domestic animals, originating in 
the domestic state, are no doubt in one sense 
