94 The Carnivora. 
each of our domestic dogs—no matter what its breed—is in its 
own person an epitomised version.. We do not feel any surprise 
when in an English family children appear who exhibit marked 
divergences from their parents in such important physical cha- 
racters as the colour of the eyes, or even in the tendency to 
brachycephaly or dolichocephaly, because the English race of 
to-day is an epitome of many races, light eyed and dark eyed, 
short headed and long headed—varieties, however, which are not 
nearly so strongly marked as those which from time to time 
have entered into the blood stream of the domestic dog. I 
cannot, then, see any difficulty in referring these cases to simple 
recurrence to an antecedent type. The whole ground is, to my 
thinking, completely covered by Heckel’s statement that “The 
series of diverse forms which every individual of a species 
passes through from the early dawn of its existence, is simply 
a short and rapid recapitulation of the series of specific mul- 
tiple forms through which his progenitors have passed, the 
ancestors of the existing species.” When, then, any two 
individuals are brought together—as, for example, a pair 
of “thorough-bred” retrievers—each contains within itself 
an epitome of this series of specific multiple forms, and 
there can be no reason for astonishment that one or other 
of them should occasionally determine the reproduction or 
revival of one of these forms, varying even considerably 
from their own type, without reference to any immediate 
influence from an antecedent alliance. 
My retriever, Carlo II., whose portrait is here given, is the 
descendant of ancestors whose history is personally known to 
me for three generations. The photograph from which the 
engraving is made has the effect of somewhat enlarging his 
head, and the position shows his fore quarters to disadvantage. 
He is now more than ten years old, is in good muscular con- 
dition, and weighs about 56lb. So well preserved is he that 
his incisors are all present, the cusps being scarcely worn off 
several of them, and the only indication of age is some tartar at 
the base of the upper canines. All the other teeth are sound 
