CARNIVORA. 
193 ^ 
Very few, if any, animals offer so much matter 
interesting to the observer of animated nature, as 
the varied races of the common dog. Its intellectual 
superiority over quadrupeds in general induces the 
thinking mind into a wide field of wonder and specu- 
lation, while the remarkable tendency to variety in 
person leads the physiologist to endeavour to trace out 
the causes of the facts he observes, and to apply them 
more generally to the whole animal creation. Every 
instance of a new variety being raised, and preserved 
hereditary, whether spontaneously or by human 
artifice, is an argument to show, that the countless 
forms, in which animal life exhibits itself to us, have 
sprung up probably in a very great, though unknown 
degree, during the lapse of ages ; whence we seem 
naturally led on to inquire, whether all, or what 
proportion of the number of animals we find, may 
not have descended from a single pair, or a very few 
original stirpes or roots. 
It is said, that the shepherd’s dog, transported into 
the temperate climates, and among people entirely 
civilized, such as England, France, and Germany, 
will be divested of its savage air, its pricked ears, 
its rough, long, and thick hair, and, from the single 
influence of climate and food alone, will become 
either a matin, a mastiff, or a hound. The last, 
whether staghound, foxhound, or beagle, transported 
•k into Spain or Barbary, where the hair of quadrupeds 
in general becomes soft and long, will be converted 
into the land-spaniel and the water-spaniel, and these 
o 
