And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.”
No animal has been so universally or so thoroughly domesticated as the Dog; in none have the moral and intellectual faculties been so largely developed; and there is certainly none which the human race could so ill spare. We might possibly, with a proper amount of practice, become vegetarians, and so do without our sheep and cattle, our pigs and poultry. The Cat we might easily dispense with, for she is, after all, a very passive sort of creature, and rarely condescends to express either emotion or affection, whatever her feelings may be; but to lose the Dog would be to lose a friend, and a friend so faithful and true that his loss would be a veritable plucking out of the right eye and a cutting off of the right hand. As Mr. Darwin observes: “It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog,” which it can hardly be said to have done, as yet, in man!
Wherever man of any degree of civilisation is found, there the Dog is to be found too—everywhere invaluable, though often grossly and brutally ill-treated. In all probability, too, Dogs occur as true natives in all parts of the world, except in the Australian region—Australia, New Zealand, and the surrounding islands; in these places he has, in all probability, been introduced by man.
The likeness of the domestic Dog to his more immediate relatives is very close. Except in the want of obliquity in the eyes, and in the curling of the tail, so different to the straight “brush” of a Wolf or wild Dog, there is really no definite character which can be given as separating Canis familiaris from the wild species of the genus. Moreover, the difference between the varieties of the Dog itself is so great, that it is impossible to frame anything like a good definition which will include the Bulldog, the Greyhound, the Newfoundland, and the Terrier, and, at the same time, exclude the Dingo and the Búansú. The one constant difference is the habit of barking, “which is almost universal with domesticated Dogs, and which does not characterise a single natural species of the family.”
The Dog certainly took its origin at a very remote period, for we find undoubted evidence of his existence and regular domestication in the very earliest records. Among the early Hebrews, he seems to have been unknown, or rather, despised; and it strikes one as a most remarkable circumstance that this astute nation of shepherds should never have domesticated so useful an assistant. Possibly this is partly owing to the prejudice the grand old Theists of Palestine must have felt against an animal held in great veneration as an emblem of the Divine Being by the idolatrous Egyptians; and yet this objection can hardly have had much weight, as the Hebrews kept Oxen, animals which were regularly worshipped by the Egyptians. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the Dog is spoken of with scorn and contempt as “an unclean beast,” so that probably the Israelites had the misfortune only to know this friend of man in the character in which he now appears in Constantinople—as the common scavenger of the neighbourhood. The only instance in the Bible in which the Dog is mentioned as a domesticated animal is in that magnificent drama, the Book of Job, a poem of great antiquity, and very possibly not of Hebrew origin. The suffering patriarch, after recounting to his “friends” the greatness of his former prosperity, says: “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” This passage is extremely remarkable, as showing at what an early period of the world’s history the Dog was sufficiently domesticated to be capable of the arduous task of guarding Sheep—a task, the proper performance of which necessitates the total suspension of the true canine instinct, which is not to guard and protect the Sheep, but to worry and devour them.
The prejudice of the Jews against the Dog is shown at the present day by the Hindoos and by the Mahometans, with whom “Dog” is the greatest possible term of reproach, and who never think of the animal as anything but a semi-useful, degraded beast, good for nothing but to clear off the offal of the streets. Among many ancient nations, however, the Dog was held in great veneration, and was even worshipped as a god. In the passage—“Howbeit every nation made gods of their own ... and the Avites made Nibhaz,”[93] the word Nibhaz is supposed to signify a barker, and it is thought that this idol had the form of a Dog. “The Egyptians had several breeds of Dogs, some solely used for the chase, others admitted into the parlour, or selected as the companions of their walks; and some, as at the present day, selected for their peculiar ugliness. All were looked upon with veneration, and the death of a Dog was not only lamented as a misfortune, but was mourned by every member of the house in which it occurred.”
It is certain that the Egyptians selected their Dogs in such a manner as to produce well-marked varieties, for, as Mr. Youatt states, “there are to be seen on the Egyptian temples representations of Dogs with long ears and broad muzzle, not unlike the old Talbot Hound.” This is extremely interesting as showing at what an early period the Dog had been completely differentiated from other Canidæ, by acquiring definite characters, quite distinct from those of his wild relations. The Assyrians, too, had advanced considerably in the art of seizing upon important varieties in the structure of their Dogs, and perpetuating them as Hounds. Mr. Darwin informs us that an undoubted Mastiff of enormous size is figured on the tomb of Esar Haddon, about 640 B.C., and he goes on to say, “I have looked through the magnificent works of Lepsius and Rosellini, and on the monuments from the fourth to the twelfth dynasties (i.e., from about 3400 B.C. to 2101 B.C.) several varieties of the Dog are represented; most of them are allied to Greyhounds. At the later of these periods a Dog resembling a Hound is figured, with drooping ears, but with a large back, and more pointed head than in our Hounds. There is, also, a Turnspit, with short and crooked legs, closely resembling the existing variety.”[94]
GREYHOUNDS. (From an Egyptian Monument.)