64 
so many animals to remain in their place of abode. I there- 
fore infer that the quadrupeds, whatever they might have 
been, were wild, and resorted to the caves for shelter, 
as is the habit of similar species in a wild state at the 
present day. Animals never (as far as I am aware) 
degenerate in a state of nature ; and as we find the dog 
depicted on the monuments of Egypt and Nimroud in a 
domestic state, and known and referred to as such, during 
the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, and as in the most 
ancient languages, as also in every modem dialect, the 
dog is known by a distinctive appellation, instead of being 
the descendant of the wolf, the supposition arises that it was 
originally specifically distinct, and very early subject to 
man's use. At all events, the period of its domestica- 
tion is lost in the lapse of ages, or not alluded to in the 
earliest of human records. And independently of the 
circumstance that the dog, as a species, is found in every 
region of the globe where man is resident, there is some 
reason for believing that it may be an earlier inhabitant of 
this planet than man himself ; in support of which I may 
adduce the fine skull exhumed from the gravel in 
Norwich, and presented to the Museum of the Leeds 
Philosophical and Literary Society, by Mr. O'Callaghan, 
which has been pronounced by Professor Owen to be 
that of a dog ; and also that the evidence in favour 
of the dingo of Australia having existed in that country 
prior to the Aborigines, is supplied by the discovery 
of a skeleton of that animal at Warnamboil, beneath a bed 
of volcanic ashes ; and further, that in the museum at 
Melbourne there is a fossil skull of a dog found in a cave at 
Mount Macedon, with other animal remains, by Mr. Selwyn, 
the Government Geological Surveyor of Victoria, which 
skull is stated on the authority of Professor M'Coy, to be 
identical with that of the dingo of the present day. "Whether, 
