The Egyptian and Barbary Dog,
according to Cuvier, has a very thick and round head, the ears erect at the base, large and movable, and carried horizontally, the skin nearly naked, and black or dark flesh-colour, with large patches of brown. A sub-variety has a kind of mane behind the head, formed of long stiff hairs.
Buffon imagines that the shepherd's dog — transported to different climates, and acquiring different habits — was the ancestor of the various species with which almost every country abounds; but whence they originally came it is impossible to say. They vary in their size, their colour, their attitude, their usual exterior, and their strangely different interior construction. Transported into various climates, they are necessarily submitted to the influence of heat and cold, and of food more or less abundant and more or less suitable to their natural organization; but the reason or the derivation of these differences of structure it is not always easy to explain.
Brown's
Biographical Sketches,
p. 425.
[Contents]/[Detailed Contents, p. 3]/[Index]
[Chapter V — The Good Qualities of the Dog — The Sense of Smell — Intelligence — Moral Qualities — Dog Carts — Cropping — Tailing — Breaking-In — Dog-Pits — Dog-Stealing]
In our history of the different breeds of the dog we have seen enough to induce us to admire and love him. His courage, his fidelity, and the degree in which he often devotes every power that he possesses to our service, are circumstances that we can never forget nor overlook. His very foibles occasionally attach him to us. We may select a pointer for the pureness of his blood and the perfection of his education. He transgresses in the field. We call him to us; we scold him well; perchance, we chastise him. He lies motionless and dumb at our feet. The punishment being over, he gets up, and, by some significant gesture, acknowledges his consciousness of deserving what he has suffered. The writer operated on a pointer bitch for an enlarged cancerous tumour, accompanied by much inflammation and pain in the surrounding parts. A word or two of kindness and of caution were all that were necessary, although, in order to prevent accidents, she had been bound securely. The flesh quivered as the knife pursued its course — a moan or two escaped her, but yet she did not struggle; and her first act, after all was over, was to lick the operator's hand.
From the combination of various causes, the history of no animal is more interesting than that of the dog. First, his intimate association with man, not only as a valuable protector, but as a constant and faithful companion throughout all the vicissitudes of life. Secondly, from his natural endowments, not consisting in the exquisite delicacy of one individual sense — not merely combining memory with reflection — but possessing qualities of the mind that stagger us in the contemplation of them, and which we can alone account for in the gradation existing in that wonderful system which, by different links of one vast chain, extends from the first to the last of all things, until it forms a perfect whole on the wonderful confines of the spiritual and material world.
We here quote the beautiful account of Sir Walter Scott and his dogs, as described by Henry Hallam:
"But looking towards the grassy mound
Where calm the Douglass chieftains lie,
Who, living, quiet never found,
I straightway learnt a lesson high;
For there an old man sat serene,
And well I knew that thoughtful mien
Of him whose early lyre had thrown
O'er mouldering walls the magic of its tone.
It was a comfort, too, to see
Those dogs that from him ne'er would rove,
And always eyed him reverently,
With glances of depending love.
They know not of the eminence
Which marks him to my reasoning sense,
They know but that he is a man,
And still to them is kind, and glads them all he can
And hence their quiet looks confiding;
Hence grateful instincts seated deep
By whose strong bond, were ill betiding,
They'd lose their own, his life to keep.
What joy to watch in lower creature
Such dawning of a moral nature,
And how (the rule all things obey)
They look to a higher mind to be their law and stay!"
The subject of the intellectual and moral qualities of the inferior animals is one highly interesting and somewhat misunderstood — urged perhaps to a ridiculous extent by some persons, yet altogether neglected by others who have no feeling for any but themselves.
have compared the relative bulk of the brain in different animals, and the result is not a little interesting. In man the weight of the brain amounts on the average to 1-30th part of the body. In the Newfoundland dog it does not amount to 1-60th part, or to 1-100th part in the poodle and barbet, and not to more than 1-300th part in the ferocious and stupid bull-dog.
the brain is cut, it is found to be composed of two substances, essentially different in construction and function — the cortical and the medullary. The first is small in quantity, and principally concerned in the food and reproduction of the animal, and the cineritious in a great measure the register of the mind. Brute strength seems to be the character of the former, and superior intelligence of the latter. There is, comparing bulk with bulk, less of the medullary substance in the horse than in the ox — and in the dog than in the horse — and they are characterized as the sluggish ox, the intelligent horse, and the intellectual and companionable dog.
the medullary substance proceed certain cords or prolongations, termed
nerves
, by which the animal is enabled to receive impressions from surrounding objects and to connect himself with them, and also to possess many pleasurable or painful sensations. One of them is spread over the membrane of the nose, and gives the sense of smell; another expands on the back of the eye, and the faculty of sight is gained; a third goes to the internal structure of the ear and the animal is conscious of sound. Other nerves, proceeding to different parts, give the faculty of motion, while an equally important one bestows the power of feeling. One division, springing from a prolongation of the brain, and yet within the skull, wanders to different parts of the frame, for important purposes connected with respiration or breathing. The act of breathing is essential to life, and were it to cease, the animal would die.
are other nerves — the sympathetic — so called from their union and sympathy with all the others, and identified with life itself. They proceed from a small ganglion or enlargement in the upper part of the neck, or from a collection of minute ganglia within the abdomen. They go to the heart, and it beats; and to the stomach, and it digests. They form a net-work round each vessel, and the frame is nourished and built up. They are destitute of sensation, and they are perfectly beyond the control of the will.
We have been accustomed, and properly, to regard the nervous system, or that portion of it which is connected with animal life — that which renders us conscious of surrounding objects and susceptible of pleasure and of pain — as the source of intellectual power and moral feeling. It is so with ourselves. All our knowledge is derived from our perception of things around as. A certain impression is made on the outward fibres of a sensitive nerve. That impression, in some mysterious way, is conveyed to the brain; and there it is received — registered — stored — and compared; there its connections are traced and its consequences appreciated; and thence a variety of interesting impressions are conveyed, and due use is made of them.
[Contents]/[Detailed Contents, p. 3]/[Index]