attack. Though well mounted, they closed upon me rapidly, and, had I not drawn my revolver and shot the leader as he sprang at my legs, I should probably have been pulled out of the saddle and torn to pieces. Although the situation was serious, I could not but regret the necessity for killing that faithful fellow in the performance of a duty which so fully tested his courage and determination. In the sheepdog we have one of the most remarkable examples of the suppression of a natural instinct; for to the unregenerate canine mind a sheep must seem specially created to be run down and killed. Yet here we find the colley, and, indeed, almost any other breed we may instruct for the purpose, devoting its physical and mental powers to the care and defence of its natural prey, and thoroughly enjoying the work. I have known excellent sheepdogs made out of the most unpromising materials. A large French poodle-a veritable Jack-of-all-trades, retriever, cattle dog, opossum hunter, and mountebank-who had been discharged from a troupe of performing dogs on account of his quarrelsome disposition, I was told-would trot about among the flocks at lambing time, and gently bid a ewe and her lamb move on, as though he had the deepest interest in treating his master's property with consideration. The sheep may have wondered what manner of dog they had to look after them when he suddenly recollected his old profession, and danced about on his hind legs every now and then; but it would not have been easy to match him for that persuasive way he had of managing a refractory or frightened flock. Another acquaintance of mine was a dog whose form betokened a cross between greyhound and bulldog—a lanky, broad-headed, and withal underhung specimen of intermixture quite comical to see a cur in the ordinary acceptation of the term, no doubt. Lying out at night on guard by the sheep yards, many a severe and victorious encounter had he had with dingoes endeavouring to break into the peaceful fold, until he was speared by a party of blacks out on a Dogs of the Ancients. 89 similar sheep-stealing errand, which his vigilance frustrated, though at the cost of his life. Assuming, as we are justified from the concurrence of all the evidence, that the dog was derived from several feral species, it is no easy task to determine at what historical period those differences which distinguish him from his wild ancestors had become established. There is scarcely anything. except perhaps the coat, to distinguish many colleys and Pomeranians from the wolf. The form of the skull and muzzle is the same; the ears are short and erect, and the general proportions quite lupine, though we know these breeds to have been under domestication for a prolonged period. But when and where did such marked forms as the bulldog, bloodhound, and greyhound appear? Ancient monuments answer this question partially at least. The figure of the dog appears frequently in Assyrian sculpture, but, though differentiation had evidently then begun to take place, there are no extreme forms. The Egyptians embalmed their lap-dogs with as much care as kings and warriors, but the mummies might be placed in Goldsmith's general category of Mongrel puppy, whelp, and hound, and curs of low degree. An inspection of the earliest Egyptian representations shows a pretty constant type, while among those belonging to the later dynasties may be found one scarcely differing from the present ownerless scavengers of Alexandria and Cairo, together with another form, lanky, long-muzzled, short-haired, and whiptailed, which might pass as a poor specimen of the greyhound. A pair of these coupled together, one with the ears drooping, the other with them erect, clearly represent fast hunting dogs of light build, spotted, or rather blotched, somewhat after the fashion of the Dalmatian. A few examples, too, closely approach the form of our modern turnspits. More important in some respects is the on the tomb of Esar-haddon, which we may place at six and a half centuries before the Christian era, the stock, mastiff-like figure perhaps, whence the Romans derived their short-face breed resembling the bulldog. Though we cannot here trace any continuity of descent, it is evident that a considerable differentiation from its wolfish ancestors had been established in the domestic dog at a very early period; but whether this was effected by conscious or unconscious selection-designed or accidental variations-it is impossible to determine. We may, however, safely conclude that slight accidental variations have in every case of domestication suggested the production of variations by selection. Surrounded as they were by predatory animals and hostile tribes, it is singular that the most pastoral people of the ancient world-the Hebrews-did not generally employ the dog as a guardian of the flocks and herds. Their "unclean beast" was not a favourite, nor even a humble servant of those patriarchal shepherds, and their annual loss of stock must consequently have been very serious. The dog is mentioned once at least in the Bible in connection with pastoral life, and in a manner not wholly contemptuous, when Job, referring to the esteem in which he had been held, and the rise of a generation of wealthy novi homines, remarks: "But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." According to some commentators, however, the Book of Job is of very doubtful Hebrew origin. It would be interesting, if it were possible, to ascertain where the Greeks obtained the dog, or the idea embodied in a piece of sculpture of the fifth century B.C., representing an animal of the Newfoundland type. We believe this breed to be derived from the North American Continent. How, then, did anything resembling it find its way to Greece? The coat and other characteristics betoken a northern origin, or at least a habitat and climate alien to Southern Europe. Possibly it may have come from the Caucasus, or the mountainous regions of the Ural, or even the shores of the Early Origin of Varieties of Dog. 91 Arctic ocean, by way of the river systems entering the Caspian it is impossible to regard it as an indigenous species. In any case, we have here a striking example of differen : tiation at least four and a half centuries B.C. Considering how closely associated the dog was with the life of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; how intimately it was connected with their sports-for Homer describes a boar hunt; and even their religious observanceshow some of these ancient people preserved its dead body with scrupulous care, while others sacrificed it to their deities; it would seem most improbable that an animal-so plastic as it proves in our hands in the short space of a century—had not become very greatly modified by accident or design long before any systematic and scientific efforts had been made to bring about the changes of which monumental history affords so much evidence. On the continent of America it had become domesticated at a time probably anterior to any of the records of the Old World; for sometimes the skull, or even the whole body, is found preserved, together with human remains, in the most ancient Peruvian graves. Older still, perhaps, were the dogs of the Stone Age in Europe; and though there are no means of ascertaining the period, both the North American Indians and the Eskimo had very early domesticated this invaluable animal. An immense time must have elapsed since the ancestors of the Eskimo of Greenland migrated-as Dr. Rae has established the direction-from west to east, and it was impossible that they could have done so without the assistance of trained dogs. Indeed, in every instance where he is found as the associate of man, the dog has undergone some modification, and often to a remarkable degree, departing from the typical form of any known wild species, and in those very regions where the wild species exist, and still maintain the lupine character. The European wolf is unquestionably the same animal as that which preyed upon the reindeer in France, Germany, and Britain, and was also the contemporary of the extinct elephantine monsters, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and such great extinct carnivora as the cave-bear, the glutton, and the sabre-toothed lion. Further back, in the Miocene gypsum of Montmartre, we have a vulpine form, scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from our familiar fox. Yet, within this interval (the feral forms still existing) have arisen all the strongly marked varieties— from the bulldog to the greyhound, from the toy terrier to the dachshund-seen at a modern dog show. Nowhere, except in the possession of man, is anything approaching them to be found. We search the whole globe vainly for any existing form of which they may have been the direct, unchanged descendants; and geology gives no countenance to the presumption that they originated in any one or more species, now extinct, of which our domesticated animals are the only remnants. Thus, we are inevitably driven to accept existing species of canis as the progenitors of our domesticated races, through the operation of the law of evolution; and there is no more need to invoke the aid of "special creations" for the origin of so valuable an animal, than for the production of so singular a bird as the tumbler pigeon, of hornless breeds of cattle, or of the absolutely new species of plants derived from wild forms by systematic experiment within the past quarter of a century-species quite permanent, and as fertile inter se and with both parents as are the different stocks of the genus canis, whether wild or domesticated. It' has been said of Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier, F.L.S.-a gentleman of world-wide renown as an authority on, and breeder of, pigeons and gallinaceous birds-that you might chalk out on a blackboard the figure of a pigeon or fowl of almost any form, and in a few years he would produce you a living copy of it. There may be a little playful exaggeration in that, but it expresses in a fashion the influence which man is really capable of exerting on the species that come within the pale of domestication. The close companionship of the |