28 



DOGS. 



Chap. i. 



In St. Domingo, Col. Ham. Smith says 37 that the feral doo-s 

 are very large, like greyhounds, of a uniform pale blue-ash 

 with small ears, and large light-brown eyes. Even the wild 

 Dingo, though so anciently naturalised in Australia, "varies 

 considerably in colour," as I am informed by Mr. P. P. King: 

 a half-bred Dingo reared in England 38 showed signs of wishing 

 to burrow. 



From the several foregoing facts we see that reversion in the feral state 

 gives no indication of the colour or size of the aboriginal parent-species. 

 One fact, however, with respect to the colouring of domestic dogs, I at 

 one time hoped might have thrown some light on their origin ; and it is 

 worth giving, as showing how colouring follows laws, even in so anciently 

 and thoroughly domesticated an animal as the dog. Black dogs with tan- 

 coloured feet, whatever breed they may belong to, almost invariably have 

 a tan-coloured spot on the upper and inner corners of each eye, and their 

 lips are generally thus coloured. I have seen only two exceptions to this 

 rule, namely, in a spaniel and terrier. Dogs of a light-brown colour often 

 have a lighter, yellowish-brown spot over the eyes; sometimes the spot 

 is white, and in a mongrel terrier the spot was black. Mr. Waring 

 kindly examined for me a stud of fifteen greyhounds in Suffolk : eleven of 

 them were black, or black and white, or brindled, and these had no eye- 

 spots ; but three were red and one slaty-blue, and these four had dark- 

 coloured spots over their eyes. Although the spots thus sometimes differ 

 in colour, they strongly tend to be tan-coloured ; this is proved by my 

 having seen four spaniels, a setter, two Yorkshire shepherd dogs, a large 

 mongrel, and some fox-hounds, coloured black and white, with not a trace 

 of tan-colour, excepting the spots over the eyes, and sometimes a little 

 on the feet. These latter cases, and many others, show plainly that the 

 colour of the feet and the eye-spots are in some way correlated. I have 

 noticed, in various breeds, every gradation, from the whole face being tan- 

 coloured, to a complete ring round the eyes, to a minute spot over the 

 inner and upper corners. The spots occur in various sub-breeds of 

 terriers and spaniels ; in setters ; in hounds of various kinds, including 

 the turnspit-like German badger-hound ; in shepherd dogs ; in a mongrel, 

 of which neither parent had the spots ; in one pure bulldog, though the 

 spots were in this case almost white; and in greyhounds,— but true 

 black-and-tan greyhounds are excessively rare ; nevertheless I have been 

 assured by Mr. Warwick, that one ran at the Caledonian Champion 

 meeting of April, 1860, and was " marked precisely like a black-and-tan 

 terrier." Mr. Swinhoe at my request looked at the dogs in China, at 

 Amoy, and he soon noticed a brown dog with yellow spots over the eyes. 

 Colonel H. Smith 39 figures the magnificent black mastiff of Thibet with a 



37 Dogs, 'Nat. Library,' vol. x. p. 

 121 : an endemic South American dog 

 seems also to have become feral in this 

 island. See Gosse's ' Jamaica,' p. 340. 



38 Low, ' Domesticated Animals,' p. 

 650. 



39 « The Naturalist Library,' Dogs, vol. 

 x. pp. 4, 19. 



