Structure Modified by Man. 75 
We may, then, with considerable confidence, pronounce the 
extraordinary productions to be seen at a modern dog show to 
represent the divergences from a wolf-like animal which have 
been brought about by human interference, in some cases of 
not long duration. On placing a bulldog and a colley side by 
side we have an immediate measure of the degree of diver- 
gence to which selection has given rise. Among all our well 
established breeds, the colley perhaps approximates most 
closely to the ancestral wolf type, while the bulldog is furthest 
removed from it, in the shape of the skull and jaws. If two 
animals, differing so widely as these, had been found in a state of 
nature, no naturalist would have hesitated for a moment to class 
them as good and distinct species; yet this variation is due to 
causes which would not in all probability have been brought 
into operation, or with nothing like equal effect, by any natural 
circumstances. The modifications in most instances would be 
distinctly disadvantageous to « predatory animal. The shorten- 
ing of the muzzle of the bulldog would impede him in cutting 
and tearing the muscles from the neck of an animal and 
bringing it to the ground, after the manner of the wolf, with 
its trenchant shear-like jaws; and those bandy legs would 
diminish his speed. In fact, several of our highly prized 
breeds if turned adrift to get their own living in a country well 
stocked with a variety of game would experience the utmost 
difficulty in supporting themselves; while some of them would 
starve in the midst of a rabbit warren from inability to catch 
anything. 
This structural evidence goes a long way towards proving 
that domestic breeds had no direct progenitors with the pecu- 
liarities now so firmly established. When the ears of a dog 
are so enormously long and his legs so ridiculously short, as 
in the Basset hound, that he sometimes treads on his ears 
and turns a somersault during the chase, we cannot but re- 
gard that as a form which Nature would not have imposed on 
a hunting animal. 
The very wide distribution of this group has been a fortu- 
