NATURAL HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF DOGS. 
571 
judicious selection or careful combination of similar or dissimilar 
kinds is kept in view, it is not difficult to conceive how, in the 
course of ages, very distinct and strongly contrasted varieties 
should not only originate, but continue and increase. 
We admit that this intermixture of originally distinct species, 
such as wolves, wild dogs, jackals, and others, and the productive 
union of the hybrid offspring with each other, is opposed by a 
physiological dictum maintained by many, and among others by 
the illustrious John Hunter, certainly one of the greatest of philo- 
sophical anatomists, — to wit, that mule animals, or the descendants 
from two distinct kinds, are not themselves prolific. This law of 
nature , it is maintained, has been instituted with a view to prevent 
that confusion which would arise from the intermingling of species 
in a state of nature, — a confusion speedily checked and ex- 
tinguished, should it by chance occur, by the barrenness of all 
hybrid animals. We should be extremely sorry to oppose any law 
of nature, and do not mean to do so at this or any future time ; 
but with the facts before us already stated, and many more in 
retentis , we maintain that, at least as respects dogs, it is not a law 
of nature at all. As we cannot bend facts, and do not desire to de- 
molish them, in order to suit a theory to which they are resistant, 
we must give up the theory itself, by whomsoever it may have 
been maintained. Tn doing so, we of course leave others to form 
their own opinion from the facts adduced, merely reserving to 
ourselves our liberty of conscience and right of private judgment, 
being unwilling to be coerced against our own convictions by any 
“ mighty Hunter,” or the dogmatical repetition of the same sen- 
timent by others of less renown. We believe that in the unre- 
claimed state, although the so called law is not imperative, the 
practical result is so far conformable, that hybrid animals, them- 
selves extremely rare, either do not breed at all, or, if they do, both 
they and their progeny speedily disappear, in consequence of their 
mixed characters being absorbed, as it were, by the prevailing 
mass of one or other of the parent kind around them. They form 
no “ tyrant minority,” and soon cease to exercise any influence 
whatever on the normal or unmixed blood by which they are en- 
compassed. But in a state of domestication the condition of affairs 
has undergone a change from the voluntary and natural to the 
forced and artificial ; and, all surrounding circumstances being in 
favour of the encouragement of hybrids, they consequently increase 
from age to age, instead of becoming almost immediately extir- 
pated. 
It cannot be doubted that the subjugation of the dog, from 
whatever source, was effected at a very early period of the history 
of man. Indeed, there is no period of that history, except the 
