570 
NATURAL HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF DOGS. 
of the exigences of its human lord and master, has not been de- 
rived originally either from any one wild species, like the wolf, or 
more directly from any single reclaimed stock, like the shepherd’s 
dog. The vast and varied range of character, mental and phy- 
sical, which the domesticated kinds exhibit, demands, as it were, 
a more comprehensive as well as complicated origin ; and even 
when we keep in view the obvious relationship which the natural 
features of many of the subdued races bear to those of their wild 
allies, it is still extremely difficult to account for the origin of many 
of our peculiar breeds. But, of course, the difficulty is not only 
greatly increased, but rendered altogether insuperable, by assuming 
a simple rather than a complex source. 
We must bear in mind, that canine animals being more com- 
pletely under the dominion of man, and more personally attached 
and devoted to him, than any other beings, they have experienced 
greater modifications in form and habits, in consequence of that 
subservience, than any others. The great migratory movements 
of different tribes of the human race, each carrying with it one or 
more established kinds, into climes and countries in some measure 
foreign to their original constitution, would naturally produce 
crosses from casual contact with other kinds ; and the offspring of 
such unions, as well as the parents which produced them, still 
acted on by the physical influences of each locality, the amount and 
nature of their food, the habitual modes of life of their human 
masters, and the nature of the education bestowed upon them, 
whether by precept or example, — these and other circumstances 
would constantly tend to increase the range of natural variation, 
till the different ends of the scale came, at last, to exhibit creatures 
of such different external and instinctive characters, as to give 
them the semblance of having little or nothing left in common. 
It must also be borne in mind, that not only is an individual dog 
capable of being highly instructed in his own vocation, but that his 
intellectual attributes, as we may call them, become so deeply 
incorporated, as to descend by inheritance to after generations, 
each bearing within it the same impressible nature, with a similar 
power of handing down to posterity a still more refined and deli- 
cate instinct, proportioned to the accomplishments it may have 
itself acquired both by descent and tuition. Hence the value of 
what are called breeds, and the almost unfailing instincts with 
which certain well-born dogs enter on their calling, even in earliest 
life, and perform their proper and peculiar functions from the very 
first, with scarcely any instructions from their masters. When 
symmetrical corporeal forms, and improved or more accommodating 
instincts, are thus capable of being communicated by inheritance, 
and when the immense advantages arising to ourselves from a 
