disposition. Man in many places has domesticated some of these; he also created breeds; and some have returned to a wild state. That all dogs, or other families of animals, or even the races of man himself, arose from a single pair, is probably now believed by few. Neither is it probable that any race appeared at once on the globe in the form we now find it.

The specimens of the European, Abyssinian, and Indian Wolf, at the Regent's Park, Zoological Gardens, are unmistakeably alike in general appearance. The two Dingo Dogs from Australia do not resemble them in either general form, appearance, or colour. They are red, changing to white under the belly and neck: in size about that of a Scotch sheep-dog, and to which they have much similitude in shape, but are most compactly made. Their noses are black, and eyes brown; ears erect and pointed; tails bushy, with a very little white at the tips (which latter is a mark said never to occur in the wolf), but carried very differently from those of their neighbours the wolves. In their play and manners, too, several actions and sounds were indicative of the dog, and their aspect and expression is by no means wolfish. On giving one some bread he tossed it frequently in the air quite playfully. The long elastic trot of the European wolf is very different from the gait of a dog. The odour of the wolf is strong and disagreeable, very dissimilar from that of the dog, which, on the contrary, when the animal is kept properly, is pleasing. The wolf's breath is offensive, and his flesh rejected by other animals. Only a wolf, it is said, will eat a wolf Other differences between the dog and wolf might be enumerated. The greatest, however, and most striking, is their

moral natures, and it is impossible to believe that such creatures as those immortalized by Landseer in his 'Dignity and Impudence,' and 'The Distinguished Member of the Humane Society,' can have a common origin and be identical with the sinister, ferocious, sanguinary, cowardly, and cruel wolf. 'Blind Mæonides' thus contrasted them :

"Grim as voracious wolves that seek the springs
When scalding thirst their burning bowels wrings;
When some tall stag, fresh-slaughter'd in the wood,
Has drench'd their wide insatiate throats with blood,
To the black fount they rush, a hideous throng,
With paunch distended, and with lolling tongue,
Fire fills their eye, their black jaws belch the gore,
And gorg'd with slaughter, still they thirst for more.
Homer's Iliad.

"Th' unwearied watch their list'ning leaders keep,
And couching close, repel invading sleep.
So faithful dogs their fleecy charge maintain,
With toil protected from the prowling train;
they start, they gaze around,

Watch ev'ry side, and turn to ev'ry sound.”

Homer's Iliad.

Most valuable evidence of the ineradicable nature of the Lupine race is that left by Gaston Phoebus and Jean de Clamorgan; as also by Christopher Wase. Testimony of such a character, based on the experience and observations of periods when the wolf was a common animal, is incalculably more reliable than a few isolated and forced experiments made by two or three individuals in recent times.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE BRITISH DOG.

THE dogs of Britain were held in high estimation both for war, the combats of the arena, and the pursuits of the chase, so far back as the days of the Roman Empire, and probably even anterior to those times. There is no mention made of them by Cæsar; but as cattle abounded, and the natives lived principally on flesh and milk, and were clad in skins, no doubt they possessed many dogs to conduct their herds and protect them from thieves and wolves, as well as to guard their dwellings in the forests and for the purposes of sport. As was the case with the ancient Germans, hunting must have occupied much of the attention of the Britons. It is uncertain, however, if they coursed the hare, for their superstition prevented them from eating it; but their neighbours the Gauls coursed with very swift and handsome greyhounds, both smooth and rough, for the pleasure and excitement of the pursuit. Indeed the greyhounds of the Gauls, if not those of the Celts, were fully equal to those of our own times, and little has been added to the knowledge of coursing possessed by their masters.' The dog, with other

See Arrian.

animals, was placed, it is stated, under the Gaulish altars of Hems, or thrown on the funeral pile of his master; and gipsies in England at this very day are said to burn or destroy the most favourite animal of a deceased gipsy at the obsequies of the latter.

Strabo, who was a contemporary of Cæsar, said of Britain, "It produces corn, cattle, gold, silver, and iron, which also form its exports, together with skins, slaves, and dogs of a superior breed for the chase. The Gauls use these dogs in war, as well as others of their own breed." Gratius Faliscus, likewise, who lived within fifty years of that period, in his hunting poem writes :--

"But if you visit the Morinian shores,

Whose ebbing waves oft leave the Ocean doubtful,

And thence cross o'er to Britain, set aside

The form and colour, which in British dogs

Are the worst points, but, when the tug of war
And inbred courage spur them to their work,
Then is their metal seen; Molossian hound
In vain competes with them."

From the latter authors alone it is clear that the English mastiff was a redoubtable animal, and highly prized, being superior even to those of Epirus; while, according to the former, either this or some other breed was both sagacious in hunting and formidable in war.2 Moreover, Claudian mentions, in his poem on the second consulate of Stilicho, 'British dogs about to break the huge necks of bulls;" and Camden, writing of Winchester, says, "Wolphgangus Lazius

66

1 Giles' Ancient Britons.

2 Strabo, Book iv., cap. 5, sect. 2.

thinks that this procurator had the care of the Emperor's dogs in this place." There can be little doubt that dogs from these islands were exported by the Romans for the sports of the amphitheatre; for Symmachus, a Consul in the fourth century, mentioned them in his seventy-sixth letter to his brother. I thank you, said he, for the present you made met of seven Scottish dogs, which were shown at the Circensian games to the great astonishment of the people, who could not judge it possible to bring them to Rome otherwise than in iron cages, like lions and tigers, so fierce were they. These animals were most likely the Irish wolf-dog.

Nemesianus also recorded the worth of our hounds: "But not Spartan whelps only, or Molossian only, ought we to feed; insular Britain will send swift ones, and such as are adapted to the chase in our quarter of the world." And Oppian, in his work on hunting, wrote: "But there is a certain strong breed of hunting-dogs, small, but worthy of a sublime song, which the wild tribes of painted Britons maintain, and they call them by the name of gaze-hounds: their size, indeed, is equal to that of the worthless pampered domestic table-dogs -crooked, slight, shaggy, dull-eyed, but their feet armed with formidable nails, and furnished with numerous envenomed teeth. Again, the gazehound is most of all excellent for his nose, and first rate for tracing, since he is greatly sagacious in finding the footsteps of animals that pass along the ground and moreover very expert in indicating even the very odour that floats in the atmosphere."

This description most probably refers to the beagle, or some such hound; but certainly is not the gazehound, with which breed it has no similarity whatever.