CHAPTER XII. 

 HABITS AND HAIR OF CARNIVORES. 



Dogs. 



Among the canidae one is able to select a type with whose habits 

 of life we are more familiar than any other, Canis Familiaris, as 

 he is affectionately called, the companion of man his master, and 

 faithful guardian — often unto death. Professor Scott Elliott 

 gives reason to think that the dog was the first animal tamed by 

 man, and that he was descended from some wild jackal -like form, 

 probably crossed by the wolf. The dog is then aptly called by 

 Huxley, the brother of the wolf, who has been changed by the 

 intelligence of man into the guardian of the flock. It seems that 

 in his rudimentary stage of domestication he was an unofficial 

 scavenger among the habitations of neolithic man, as the pariah 

 is in the East to-day, and that little acts of kindness towards his 

 offspring on the part of those early men and women were the first 

 dawnings of a friendship of thousands of years. It is a long story 

 from the slinking jackal to the bloodhound, mastiff, St. Bernard, 

 staghound, collie and terrier of to-day, and one which reflects 

 much credit on both parties to this friendship, just as do those other 

 long friendships between servant and master, of which we still see 

 a few examples. Living with us as he does the dog and his habits 

 of life are an open book ; he is then all the better for my humble 

 purpose here. I would refer again to the curious use of the gender 

 which we unconsciously apply to the dog. It is no longer " she," 

 but " he." When a dog is looking a little unfriendly how we 

 always try to wheedle him with " Poor old fellow," and so on, 

 as a matter of course, assuming his masculine character. James 

 Payn pointed out once a little point which proves how good a 

 comrade we have in the dog, when he reminds us of the cautious 

 approach we usually make to a cat, and the " hail-fellow-well-met " 

 tone we adopt towards the dog, rolling him over and using kindly 

 opprobious terms, such as friends among schoolboys hurl at one 

 another when they are on the best of terms. A fox-terrier is, 

 perhaps, the most human of all the numerous types evolved through 

 the skill of man, and it is a smooth -coated specimen of this variety 

 which I will examine now as to what his hairy coat can tell us of 

 his habits* 



