14 



OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



grectint,^ with lamentable howls a street organ, 

 the good or bad playing of a piano, the vulgar 

 or the artistic twanging of a \iolin, or the soft, 

 sweet singing of a lute. People call it howling. 

 A dog neither laughs nor weeps. Is he sad, 

 he puts his tail between his legs, hangs his 



Too Hot in Front; too Cold liiciiixi) 



The bite of an angry dog is to be feared. 

 His teeth are shown as far as possible, his lips 

 and ears are drawn back, and his hair bristles 

 up along his spine. The meeting of two dogs, 

 strangers to each other or distrustful, is nearly 

 always accompanied by these phenomena. 



V. The Pri.\-cip.\l Families 

 OF Dogs 



It has always been, and still 

 is, a brain puzzle to class cor- 

 rectly the innumerable canine 

 races. Aristotle (333 b.c.) 

 began to do so, and the end 

 is not )'et in sight. Hunting 

 dogs, pet dogs, useful dogs 

 great and small, street dogs, 

 watchdogs, have served as 

 the main groups. Cuvier de- 

 sired to introduce a new 

 classification of the canine 

 races according to the length 

 of their skulls. Linnaeus gave 

 only a passing attention to 

 them, and Fitzinger estimated 

 that three hundred species were altogether too 

 few. Suppose we try, in our turn, to make no 



head, and emits a plainti\e howl. Is he joyful 



his behavior is just the contrary : the expressix'i. 



thermometer of his soul rises, quix'crs, wags, classification at all. Open the iron gates wide 



and a joyous bark, quite different from all other and let them all come in pellmell — dogs with 



barks, sharper and shorter, is heard. When short hair, long hair, wiry hair, and smooth hair, 



certain dogs are in particularly good humor little dogs and great dogs, sporting dogs, hunting 



they show their teeth from time to time and dogs, watchdogs, and let one and all show what 



clack them, protruding their lijis, 



and a sort of grimace spi^eads 



o\'er their visage. They 



also e.xjjress joy by leaps, / 



rolling on the ground, : 



and all sorts of comic \ 



contortions ; and, what 



is very remarkable, the 



same e-\pressi\'e motions are 



seen in wolves and jackals. The 



licking of their master's hand 



must be regarded as derived from the haliit of 



licking objects that are dear to them — their 



young, for instance. Hence comes also the 



habit of some dogs and their congeners of 



biting one another in play. 



SiRUTINY 



they are and what they can do. 

 Fox terriers. It would be 

 mar\'elous if the agile, 

 combative fox terrier did 

 not come first. He is a 

 joyous animal, who is no 

 onger e.xclusix'ely em- 

 ployed in fox hunting or in 

 starting game (foxes and 

 badgers). He has become the 

 fashionable pleasure dog, and 

 such he remains, due, doubtless, to his neat 

 figure, his lively air, and his amusing nature. 

 Belonging to the great family of terriers (known 

 in England in 161 7, during the reign of James I, 

 as earth dogs, terriers), he is really much less 



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