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boar-dog, the noble and intelligent Newfoundland, the slender and rapid greyhound, the courageous and powerful mastiff, and the diminutive and timid Blenheim, all arise from this one source? If so, pray how did these varieties arise? We are told, readers, that they all arose from the effects of climate, treatment, and breeding. As to breeding, how in the name of wonder could it operate when there was but one variety to breed from? How, if the varieties of dog proceeded from the one type, could developments be produced extending beyond the limits of the powers and faculties proper to that type? Would change of climate or treatment ever turn a greyhound into a bull-dog? Would it truncate the muzzle, raise the frontal bones, enlarge the frontal sinuses, or effect a positive alteration of the posterior branches of the lower maxillary bones? Or would such treatment or change of climate, on the other hand, turn a bull-dog into a greyhound, and produce a high and slender form, diminish the extent of the frontal sinuses, and deprive the animal of smell, with courage and other moral qualities depending on structure. My opponents have not in this instance, as in the preceding, endeavoured to produce any proof; all is talk with them, and consequently I conceive talk sufficient to answer them with, leaving it to the reader to judge whose talk is most rational, and most agreeable to common sense. A very eminent naturalist of the present day, and one whose writings I have read with pleasure, and have quoted more than once in the course of this work, besides availing myself of much useful information, which I here beg thankfully to acknowledge, viz., Colonel Hamilton Smith, goes thus far with me, but here he stops. The Colonel admits all that I have already put forward, and to his valuable arguments I refer as substantiatory of all that I have hitherto adduced; here, however, we part company. Colonel Smith endeavours to account for these differences by referring the varieties of dog to the effects of admixture with the wolf, fox, and hyæna, i. e., he admits an originally formed dog, but insists on his owing his improvements and alterations to these types. This theory I consider as even less tenable than that of the wolfish origin of the dog, as the Colonel is obliged to bring in various races of wild dogs to his aid; and where is their origin? For my own part, my opinion is simple enough, and I think will obtain many votaries, especially among sportsmen, and such as will rather judge for themselves than suffer themselves to be overawed by a phalanx of learned and highsounding names, or fall into the current of mystic theory, in which freedom of opinion will be readily swamped and ingulfed. would for my part say, that let it be granted that the dog was originally formed by the Creator in order to be the friend and companion of man, it is by no means absurd to suppose that more than one variety was thus so formed. If He did thus wish to exhibit his prescient benevolence, and to furnish man with an auxiliary after other animals should cease to be his friends and companions, and become his enemies, why should he not have formed one dog to guard his flocks and herds, another to pursue his

*Nat. Lib. Mam., vol. ix and x.

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game, and another to aid him in combatting the various tribes of savage carnivora, who would be constantly encountering him, and disputing with him inch for inch his inroads on their imagined territory; or, in other words, the progress of civilization. In the grand work of creation, He was evidently guided by prescience; he looked beyond the present hour, he looked into the future, and to that future end he formed all that he did form. Man was created utterly destitute of weapons of offence or defence. Had he continued to obey the single precept on which depended his stay in Paradise, this feebleness would never have been felt. The fruits of the earth would have been amply sufficient for his support, and the animals, far from being disposed to attack him, would never have thrown off their allegiance, but have continued friends, subservient to his amusement or his necessities, if indeed he had any. Agriculture would have been unnecessary, for the earth would have yielded a spontaneous harvest; the ox would not have been wanted for the plough, nor the horse for the battle field; for then there would have been no battles, no contention. All mankind would have lived together in harmony-as members of one family-children of one Father-subjects of one eternal Sovereign.

Now, it must be evident to any reasoning mind, that the Creator not merely knew that this state of things would be of very short continuance, but that he also acted upon that foreknowledge, and created all animals which inhabit our globe with a reference to the state of man in his subsequent and fallen, not in his angelic, nature or state of existence. The teeth, claws, and general structure of the true carnivora, for instance, plainly indicate that flesh, and flesh only, was designed by their Maker to be their food; for it is evident that the lion and the tiger could not eat grass or shrubs, any more than could the ox rend his animal prey and subsist upon its flesh. He, then, formed every animal with a view to an ulterior definite end; he created no one part of the frame of any animal, unless for an especial ulterior use. He looked beyond the fall, and the teeth, claws, and digestive organs of the carnivora were constituted for living on prey; while, on the other hand, the ruminantia and rodentia, &c., had in like manner their future destiny allotted to them. All this proves that whatever He created at the original great creation, he created with a reference to man's condition subsequent to the fall; and why, then, are we not to suppose that He, in his mercy and prescience, did not form the domestic dog as an animal that would prove, after that event, a valuable auxiliary to man?

Now, again, had He then supplied man with a dog, would not that dog have been formed with a view to the ends for which he would ulteriorly be required? And would one representative of the canine race have been sufficient for that purpose ? When our Maker does anything, his work is never done by halves. And why should he not have furnished man with two or three dogs as readily as with one, leaving it to him as directed by the reason implanted in him to cross and improve upon these varieties as his further necessities might demand. Reasoning thus, I am led to the conclusion that three, or at least two, varieties of domestic dog were formed at the creation. In

the paper I sent to the "New Sporting Magazine," already alluded to, I mentioned three; I am now content to confine myself to two varieties as of original creation, as from subsequent thought and anatomical investigation, I have come to the conclusion that these two would have been sufficient to have accounted for the multiplication of varieties that have since taken place; and we know that the Creator, though at all times beneficent and bountiful, is never wasteful of his omnipotence. These two varieties I would designate as mastiff's and greyhounds, and in this arrangement I am fully borne out by the craniological development of the animal, a development too strongly marked to admit of being explained away as the effect of accident or contingency.

The antiquity of the dog rests on the authority of all the old writers, independently of what I have above endeavoured to demonstrate by analogy and argument, and by all these is he spoken of as the friend and companion of man, as a well known domesticated animal. That very learned and deeply read philosopher, Conrad Gesner, furnishes us with the following list of his names in divers languages. Other authors, who have treated of the dog, have complacently appropriated it to themselves as a specimen of their own erudition; but I, as I write for utility rather than for effect, can afford to be honest.

The dog is called in Hebrew, Keleb, (and according to Munster, Lamas); in the Chaldee, Kaiba; in the Arabic, Kelbe; in Persian, Sag; by the Saracens, Kep or Kolph; in Greek, Kuon; in modern Greek, Skilos and Shule; by the Medes, Spaco; the Germans, Hund; the Italians, Cune; the French, Chien; and the Latins, Canis; to which I venture to add, by the Spaniards, Pero; by the Scottish Highlanders and the native Irish, Ku; and the Welch, Ki.

The sacred writings make frequent mention of the dog, but allude to him as a settled domestic animal and never once hint at his having been reclaimed from a wild state, which I think would have been done had such really been the case. We are told that "Anah found the mules in the desert while tending his father's asses "--but, in no place are we told of any one finding the dog. In the account of the departure of Israel from Egypt, we find him familiarly mentioned and likewise his watchful propensities and his barking powers clearly recognised, as things of course. "Nor shall a dog open his mouth, &c.;" and in the latter part of Genesis, not long prior to that, we find Jacob, when blessing his sons, comparing Benjamin to a "ravening wolf." Is not this familiar mention of the wolf, in the latter part of Genesis, and the equally familiar mention of the dog in the beginning of the following book-both, remember, written by the same individual-a strong confirmation of the entire distinction ever existing between the two animals? The actual space intervening between the blessing of the sons of Jacob and the departure from Egypt was but about 360 years; in those days, barely equal to three generations. The dog spoken of in Exodus xi. 7, appears to have been, to all intents and purposes, a genuine dog, with all the character

De Animabilus, &c.

istics of the modern ones. It is plain that these were neither domesticated wolves, nor yet reclaimed wild dogs, for these never can be taught to bark, and yet were not the Egyptian dogs in the habit of doing so-of" opening their mouth" at strangers? When the sons of Israel departed from Egypt, it is plain that they brought some of these animals with them, as we afterwards find the dog amongst those creatures that, straying about the camp, might heedlessly approach the holy mount. The Egyptians have, from the earliest periods, made use of the dog in their hieroglyphics, in which he has been alternately employed to designate the spleen, smell, a prophet, or a scribe the spleen, because that people considered him to have none; a scribe, because that he spent more time in silence than in barking; a prophet, because he was thought to delight in good actions and to exercise all his powers for the good of man; and smell, from his known perfection in that quality.

The Egyptian god, Anubis, was represented as bearing a dog's head, because when Osiris went on his Indian expedition, Anubis accompanied him, clothed in the skin of that animal. Solinus and Æleanus inform us of a nation of Ethiopia who maintained a dog as their king and had no other; and a tribe of North American Indians, at this moment, conceive that the deity has become incarnate under this form. The earliest named star was the dog-star, Sirius. The constellation of Orion, near Sirius, was supposed to have been a great hunter, and many have supposed the latter to have been his favorite hound-hence the Cynic period of the Egyptians, accomplished but once in 1460 years.

The Lares of the Romans and Greeks were always clothed in dog skins. We are very sorry that we have not space to enter further into the ancient history of this very useful creature; and such of our readers as require further information, or feel further curiosity on the the subject, we beg to refer to the pages of vols. ix. and x. of Jardine's Naturalist's Library; to the works of Gesner, Johnson, and Caius, and to that of our esteemed friend, in our earlier studies, Captain Thomas Brown.

I have now, I conceive, shewn, to the satisfaction of my readers, that the dog was neither derived from a reclaimed wolf, fox, or jackal-that he was not originally created wild, but formed domestic, and decreed by the Creator permanently to remain so, in order to aid and assist man; and I trust that my readers will at once recognise, in this view of the subject, not only more common sense than obtains in other theories that I have discussed, but a view which differs from them in adding to, rather than detracting from, the beneficent Creator of the universe to which I have striven to demonstrate that we are directly indebted for this useful, indefatigable, nay, invaluable servant. I have endeavoured, likewise, to give a short sketch of his carly history, in order to show at what a very remote period of antiquity he was recognised and is recorded as a servant of man: and, having gone thus far, it strikes me that it will be best to leave a detail of his varieties, his branchings out from

* Some say a sheep's skin.

the primitive, the originally formed stocks, into the many varied forms under which he now appears. I know that there are certain dogmas that "men of science" cannot bring themselves to give up, and that, among others, the assertion that two varieties of any species were never originally formed in one. It may be that this objection may be advanced in opposition to my theory; but my answer shall be ready. I will never be found backward in defending any, or all, of the positions I have ever brought forward.

NOTITIA VENATICA.

BY R. T. VYNER, ESQ.

(Continued.)

At the commencement of the cub-hunting season, if foxes are very plentiful, the old hounds should be taken out two or three times before the puppies are entered. But here let me remind my readers that I am speaking of a newly-formed pack of hounds. In old-established packs, where the body of old hounds can be depended on, the young entry should be taken out with them from the first morning. During these trials, such as are noisy or wide should be put away decidedly for the first offence.

Old hounds which cannot run up, if steady and not noisy, may be extremely useful, at any rate for the first season: and, after the young ones have joined them, no others should be received into the pack, even as presents. No one parts with a hound at that season of the year which is worth a farthing, and new acquaintances invariably create wildness and jealousies; the constantly rating and flogging those which are wild and vicious, tend considerably to alarm and disturb those which are already steady, and from shyness and distrust they become themselves reckless and ungovernable." Dimidium facti qui bene cæpit habet," is a motto which cannot be too forcibly impressed upon the mind of any one making his debut as a master of hounds. If you have sufficient walks, or quarters, as they are sometimes called, to enable you to breed your own, begin from a good stock at first; there is plenty of choice; and bad blood, once introduced, may blight the fruits of your undertakings for many years to come; and, above all, remember the words of the dying huntsman, "Breed 'em wi' plenty of bone."* A new back will seldom allow of the breeding establishment being very extensive for the first season. It is never worth while to breed from very old bitches; the whelps they throw are frequently small and weak; and those which can be really depended upon as being of a good family and sound constitution will, of course, not be very numerous. Never breed from those which are delicate of either sex, and never propagate vice in your kennel by breeding Almost the last words of old Tom Grant, many years huntsman to his Grace the Duke of Richmond.

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