522 
NATURAL HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF DOGS. 
signed even to the most variable species, that the whole of our 
infinitely diversified tribes of dogs, from the noble and gigantic 
stag-hound to the useful terrier and degraded pug-dog, have all 
sprung originally from one and the same blood-thirsty savage! 
We can scarcely conceive the possibility, and in no way see the 
necessity of such a parentage. 
That the wolf and dog breed freely together had, however, been 
long ascertained from experiments made in a state of confinement 
(we can scarcely call it domestication), and that they freely seek 
each other’s society, as belonging to the same kind, has been still 
more explicitly proved in later years, when at least one of the 
animals was in a condition of total wildness. During Sir Edward 
Parry’s first voyage (see Supplement to the Appendix) frequent 
instances were observed of more than one dog belonging to the 
officers being enticed away by she wolves. “ In December and 
January, which are the months in which wolves are in season, a 
female paid almost daily visits to the neighbourhood of the ships, 
and remained till she was joined by a setter dog belonging to one 
of the officers. They were usually together for two or three hours; 
and as they did not go far away, unless an endeavour was made 
to approach them, repeated and decided evidence was obtained of 
the purpose for which they were thus associated. As they be- 
came more familiar, the absences of the dog were of longer con- 
tinuance, until, at length, he did not return, having probably fallen 
a sacrifice to an encounter with a male wolf. The female, how- 
ever, continued to visit the ship as before, and enticed a second 
dog in the same manner, which, after several meetings, returned 
so severely bitten as to be disabled for many days.” 
The Esquimaux dogs bear a strong resemblance to the northern 
wolves, and we do not see how they could have sprung from any 
other source. “Without entering,” says Sir John Richardson, 
“ at all into the question of the origin of the domestic dog, I may 
state that the resemblance between the wolves and dogs of those 
Indian nations who still preserve their ancient mode of life con- 
tinues to be very remarkable, and’ it is nowhere more so than at 
the very northern extremity of the continent, the Esquimaux dogs 
being not only extremely like the grey wolves of the arctic circle 
in form and colour, but also nearly equalling them in size*.” So 
great, indeed, was the resemblance between these North American 
wolves and the sledge-dogs of the natives, that our arctic voyagers 
frequently mistook a band of the former for the domestic troop of 
an Indian party. The cry of each is precisely the same. “ Ils 
hurlent plustost qu’ils n’abayent,” says Sagard Theodat, in the old 
Fauna Boreali- Americana, p. 75. 
