constantly occupied the same yard, but have generally been chained up. The lioness has never seen a lion since her arrival in this country, and no animal except the mastiff can have had access to her. These curiosities will, no doubt, create great speculation among naturalists, and the discussion will tend to enliven the coming dull season, if no more useful end will be answered."

In the Museum at Keswick is an animal said to be between a racoon and a sheep. The lion and tiger will breed together, and Caius says the same of the bear and bandog.

That the wolf has been tamed, and, in some cases, shown great affection for man, is true; but the instances, strong as they are, seem to be only exceptions to a rule. Besides, the same may be said of other animals: the elephant, lion, otter, and even the seal, have been perfectly domesticated, and shown marked attachment. Similar facts might be brought forward of other animals, and also of birds and reptiles; indeed, perhaps there is no species of creature which might not be largely influenced by love if consistently shown to it by man. The succeeding instances exhibit the wolf in two lights:

"A lady near Geneva had a tame wolf, which seemed to have as much attachment to its mistress as a spaniel. She had occasion to leave home for some weeks; the wolf evinced the greatest distress after her departure, and at first refused to take food. During the whole time she was absent he remained much dejected. On her return, as soon as the animal heard her footsteps he bounded into the room in an ecstasy of delight; springing up, he placed one paw on each

of her shoulders, but the next moment he fell backward and

instantly expired.

"M. de Candolle, Lecturer on Natural History of Geneva, related this story."

1

O'Brien's Round Towers of Ireland, p. 468.

Lord Byron said, in reply to a question from Moore concerning Southey's Roderick, as to the possibility of a dog being able to know his master, when neither his mother nor his mistress could recollect him,

66

"The dog who lay,

Before Rusillo's feet, eyeing him long
And wistfully, had recognized at length,
Changed as he was, and in those sordid weeds,
His royal master. And he rose and lick'd
His wither'd hand, and earnestly looked up,
With eyes whose human meaning did not need
The aid of speech; and moan'd, as if at once
To court and chide the long-withheld caress."
(Poetical Works, Ed. 1838.).

As for canine recollections, as far as I could judge by a cur of mine own (always bating Boatswain, the dearest, and, alas! the maddest of dogs), I had one (half a wolf by the she side) that doted on me at ten years old, and very nearly ate me at twenty. When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him. So, let Southey blush and Homer too, as far as I can decide upon quadruped memories."-1815.

i Moore's Life of Byron, p. 274.

In Southey's 'Common Place Book' occurs this extract :

"Our back country settlers generally say that to tame wolves is as impracticable as to civilize Indians."

Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 99.

The next example is from the Field' of the 30th May, 1863:

"TAMING THE WOLF.-Some years ago, when at Gibraltar, I obtained a young wolf-pup, and reared him and fed him myself, and he was for some time quite tame. He soon, however, became very savage when he was being fed, but would allow me to come up to him and fondle him at other times. At last he broke his chain and nearly killed a child, and had to be destroyed. At one time I used to take him out and give him rats, which he used to kill and eat, till one day a rat fastened on his lip, and he never would look at one afterwards. One day I gave him a bullock's head, and in eating it one of the bones stuck in his throat. He allowed me then to come up to him and take the bone out, but he was just as savage soon afterwards when eating."-S. S. J.

The female wolf may be tameable perhaps. In the instances given by F. Cuvier and others of tame wolves, they were generally not at large; if they had been, they might have returned to the woods, killed sheep and cattle, and, perhaps, their owner, instead of dying in his defence like the dog. Modus says, that wolves eat the fur of their prey, and that dogs never do. Clamorgan differs as to this. Wolves devour the dog, but the dog turns with disgust from the carcase of the slain wolf. Dogs will not kill tame rabbits. No

one, perhaps, ever heard of a wolf learning to bark, yet dogs of foreign countries, who never barked, acquire the practice from European dogs. Wolves swarmed in Ireland, and were not exterminated till recent times; nevertheless no wolf-like dogs are found there. Indeed the wolves owe their destruction materially to a special breed of dogs, the magnificent and now extinct Irish wolf-hound. The noble sheep-dog of the Pyrenees has no outward resemblance to the wolf of those mountains. Where dogs have run wild in England and preyed on sheep, we never read of their attacking human beings; and when hunted by a pack of hounds these refused to kill them. Even in Australia it is difficult to get the English dog to kill the Dingo; but fox-hounds in France will run into a wolf and worry him at once.

The dog is no more a wolf than man is an orang: structure of frame in both cases brings them near to each other, but constitution of mind puts them far asunder. People persistently seek for the original type of a species, and if unable to find what is consistent with their theory, fix on something else, and try to bend evidence to support their particular view. Perhaps the origin of the domestic dog is to be sought in the forests of the East, but if it exists not there it matters not; the type may have disappeared ages ago. Where can the camel be found in a wild state? Also other domesticated animals? For example, the cat: the indigenous wild cat of our woods is undoubtedly not the same creature as the domestic cat.

Between dog and wolf there exists an instinctive, a reciprocal, and a deadly hatred; and though wild animals always attack with peculiar animosity tamed creatures of

their species, it does not appear that the latter have like feelings against the former. I once knew a case of a magpie which escaped from his cage, but, though he never could be caught, he did not join his brethren, but haunted the garden and neighbourhood of the house, where he had frequent battles with a young cock. The Dingo is looked upon as a true dog, but there are no wolves on the continent of Australia, and its animal life is peculiar to the region. The question of the origin of the dog can only be solved by the resolution of the great enigma of the origin of species. But the mental eye will probably never pierce the gloom of that dark and profound gulf which separates us from the knowledge of long-passed changes. So far as the little span of human records extends, there is nothing but what shows the dog to have ever been the same creature as he exists at this hour in relation to man, and totally distinct from the wolf, whose nature is marked in Genesis,-" Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf." After all, in nature no such distinction as species exists; the line of division cannot be drawn; Nature being a continuous chain of changing and invisible links. So-called species may alter slowly and depart wider by degrees from what it was once, but it cannot be suddenly introduced-the chain cannot be cut and a new link of homogeneous form and metal be welded in between.

The dog exists in a wild state as much, or more, than the wolf, not in one, but in many parts of the globe. Throughout Hindostan, Ceylon, Java, Nepaul, Beelochistan, Persia, Natolia, Congo, Guinea, Nubia, Australia, South America, and possibly in many other countries. These species vary considerably from each other in colour, size, and probably in