The Dog tn Pastoral Pursuits. 17 
animals and to innumerable plants. No more complete and 
valuable conquest over the brute creation has ever been effected. 
We cannot doubt that this one species has been the prime and 
indispensable agent in giving us dominion over those numerous 
animals without which it would not now be possible to maintain 
civilised existence. Townsend justly observes “the dog is the 
first element in human progress. Without the dog man would 
have been condemned to vegetate eternally in the swaddling 
clothes of savagery. It was the dog which effected the passage 
of human society from the savage to the patriarchal state, in 
making possible the guardianship of the flock. Without the dog 
there could be no flocks and herds; without the dog there is no 
assured livelihood, no leg of mutton, no roast beef, no wool, no 
blankets, no time to spare, and consequently, no astronomical 
observations, no science, no industry. It is to the dog that man 
owes his hours of leisure.” 
From the position of the hunting companion of man, the dog 
would be promoted to the even more important duty of guarding 
his flocks, Man, as we know, has in all countries passed 
successively through the hunting, the pastoral, and the agricul- 
tural stages. In the first of these the dog would be his chief 
assistant in the chase, and in the second most necessary in 
guarding the flock from predatory animals while out on the 
pastures, and giving warning of their approach at night by the 
habit of barking, which has certainly been acquired under 
domestication. No satisfactory explanation of the process by 
which the voice has thus become modified in so remarkable a 
manner has been proposed, but it is certain that no wild species 
gives utterance to any other sound but a prolonged howl, or very 
occasionally a short yapping noise. This change in the voice 
must have been useful, too, to pastoral man, for it indicates 
most clearly to the practised ear a difference in the character of 
the object at the moment exciting the dog’s anger or suspicion, 
as I shall show presently from my own experience. 
Even those who have witnessed the splendid work accomplished 
by colleys among the mountains of Scotland and Wales cannot 
