20 DOGS. 



Chap. I. 



dog being the descendants of distinct wild stocks, is their re- 

 semblance in various countries to distinct species still existing 

 there. It must, however, be admitted that the comparison 

 between the wild and domesticated animal has been made but 

 in few cases with sufficient exactness. Before entering on 

 details, it will be well to show that there is no a priori difficulty 

 m the belief that several canine species have been domesticated ; 

 for there is much difficulty in this respect with some other 

 domestic quadrupeds and birds. Members of the dog family 

 inhabit nearly the whole world ; and several species agree 

 pretty closely in habits and structure with our several domes- 

 ticated dogs. Mr. Galton has shown 12 how fond savages are 

 of keeping and taming animals of all kinds. Social animals 

 are the most easily subjugated by man, and several species of 

 Canidae hunt in packs. It deserves notice, as bearing on other 

 animals as well as on the dog, that at an extremely ancient 

 period, when man first entered any country, the animals living 

 there would have felt no instinctive or inherited fear of him, 

 and would consequently have been tamed far more easily than 

 at present. For instance, when the Falkland Islands were first 

 visited by man, the large wolf-like dog (Canis antarcticus) fear- 

 lessly came to meet Byron's sailors, who, mistaking this ignorant 

 curiosity for ferocity, ran into the water to avoid them : even 

 recently a man, by holding a piece of meat in one hand and 

 a knife in the other, could sometimes stick them at night. On 

 an island in the Sea of Aral, when first discovered by Butakoff, 

 the saigak antelopes, which are "generally very timid and 

 watchful, did not fly from us, but on the contrary looked at us 

 with a sort of curiosity." So, again, on the shores of the 

 Mauritius, the manatee was not at first in the least afraid of 

 man, and thus it has been in several quarters of the world with 

 seals and the morse. I have elsewhere shown 13 how slowly 

 the native birds of several islands have acquired and inherited 

 a salutary dread of man : at the Galapagos Archipelago I 

 pushed with the muzzle of my gun hawks from a branch, and 



12 « Domestication of Animals :' Eth- arcticus, see p. 193. For the case of the 

 nological Soc, Dec. 22nd, 1863. antelope, see ' Journal Eoyal Geograph. 



13 ' Journal of ^Researches,' &c, 1845, Soc.,' vol. xxiii. p. 94. 

 -p. 393. "With respect to Canis ant- 



