THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 281 
soul, senses, appetites, and instincts, and it is 
worth while inquirmg whether contact with man 
has had the same ameliorating effect on these as it 
is supposed to have had on his psychical faculties. 
In other words, has he ceased to be a jackal? For 
if a negative answer must be given, it follows that, 
however fit to be the servant, the dog is scarcely 
fit to be the intimate associate and friend of man; 
for friendship implies a similarity in habits, if 
nothing more, and man is not by nature an unclean 
animal. 
Dr. Romanes, in his work on Mental Evolution 
in Animals, speaks of what he calls unpleasant 
survivals in the dog, such as burying food until it 
becomes offensive before eating it, turning round 
and round on the hearth-rug before lying down, 
rolling in filth, etc., ete., and he says that they have 
remained unaffected by contact with man because 
these instincts being neither useful nor harmful 
have never been either cultivated or repressed. 
From which it may be inferred that in his opinion 
these disagreeable habits may be got rid of in 
time. But why does he call them survivals? If 
the action, so frequently observed in the dog, of 
turning round several times before lying down, is 
correctly ascribed to an ancient habit in the wild 
animal of treading down the grass to make a bed 
to sleep on, it is rightly called a survival, and is a 
habit neither useful nor harmful in the domesticated 
state, which has never been either cultivated or 
repressed, and will in time disappear. Thus far 
