Chap. I. MEANS OF MODIFICATION. 37 



cares for the form and fleetness of his greyhounds, for the size 

 of his mastiffs, for the strength of the jaw in his bulldogs, &c. ; 

 but he cares nothing about the number of their molar teeth or 

 mammas or digits ; nor do we know that differences in these 

 organs are correlated with, or owe their development to, differ- 

 ences in other parts of the body about which man does care. 

 Those who have attended to the subject of selection will admit 

 that, nature having given variability, man, if he so chose, could 

 fix five toes to the hinder feet of certain breeds of dogs, as 

 certainly as to the feet of his Dorking-fowls : he could probably 

 fix, but with much more difficulty, an additional pair of molar 

 teeth in either jaw, in the same way as he has given addi- 

 tional horns to certain breeds of sheep ; if he wished to produce 

 a toothless breed of dogs, having the so-called Turkish dog with 

 its imperfect teeth to work on, he could probably do so, for 

 he has succeeded in making hornless breeds of cattle and 

 sheep. 



With respect to the precise causes and steps by which the 

 several races of dogs have come to differ so greatly from each 

 other, we are, as in most other cases, profoundly ignorant. We 

 may attribute part of the difference in external form and con- 

 stitution to inheritance from distinct wild stocks, that is to 

 changes effected under nature before domestication. We must 

 attribute something to the crossing of the several domestic and 

 natural races. I shall, however, soon recur to the crossing of 

 races. We have already seen how often savages cross their dogs 

 with wild native species; and Pennant gives a curious account 71 

 of the manner in which Fochabers, in Scotland, was stocked 

 " with a multitude of curs of a most wolfish aspect " from a 

 single hybrid-wolf brought into that district. 



It would appear that climate to a certain extent directly 

 modifies the forms of dogs. We have lately seen that several 

 of our English breeds cannot live in India, and it is positively 

 asserted that when bred there for a few generations they de- 

 generate not only in their mental faculties, but in form. Captain 

 Williamson,™ who carefully attended to this subject, states that 

 "hounds are the most rapid in their decline ; " "greyhounds and 



71 'History of Quadrupeds,' 1793, vol. n . oriental Field Sports,' quoted by 



P> " Youatt, ' The Dog,' p. 15. 



