History of the Dog

The History of the Dog.

General History of the Dog

" Then said he to Tobias, Prepare thyself for the journey, and God send you a good journey. And when his son had prepared all things for the journey, his father said, Go thou with this man, and God, which dwelleth in Heaven, prosper your journey, and the angel of God keep you company. So they went forth both, and the young man's dog with them." TOBIT v. 16.

The Dog in Prehistoric Times

In the Academy at Brussels there is a delightful picture by Breughel representing the Garden of Eden, in which the artist has introduced a rough Skye-terrier lying contentedly curled at the feet of Adam and Eve. This is a stretch of the probabilities ; no dog of a recognisable breed lived at a time so remote. There is, however, no incongruity in the idea that in the very earliest period of man's habitation of this world he made a friend and companion of some sort of aboriginal representative of our modern dog, and that in return for its aid in protecting him from wilder animals, and perhaps in guarding his sheep and goats, he gave it a share of his food, a corner in his dwelling, and grew to trust it and care for it.

There is ample evidence to prove the existence of a semi-domestic dog in prehistoric times. Probably the animal was originally little else than an unusually gentle jackal, or an ailing wolf driven by its companions from the wild marauding pack to seek shelter in alien surroundings. One can well conceive the possibility of the partnership beginning in the circumstance of some helpless whelps being brought home by the early hunters and being afterward tended and reared by the women and children. The present-day savage of New Guinea and mid-Africa does not, as a rule, take the trouble to tame and train an adult wild animal for his own purposes, and primitive man was surely equally indifferent to the questionable advantage of harbouring a dangerous guest. But a litter of woolly whelps introduced into the home as playthings for the children would grow to regard themselves, and be regarded, as members of the family, and it would soon be found that the hunting instincts of the maturing animal were of value to his captors. The savage master, treading the Primeval forests in search of food, would not fail to recognise the helpfulness of a keener nose and sharper eyes even than his own unsullied senses, while the dog in his turn would find a better shelter in associa-

Danish " Kitchen middens," or heaps of household refuse, piled up by the men of the Newer Stone age an age when these Neolithic peoples used chipped or polished flints instead of metal for their weapons are found bone remnants belonging to some species of the genus Cam's. Along with these remains are some of the long bones of birds, all the other bones of the birds being absent. Now it is known that there are certain bird bones those of the legs and wings which dogs cannot devour, and it is just these which remain, while the absent ones are of the kind which any dog will eat. The inference is that when the family meal was finished the scraps were cast to the dogs, who ate what they could.

Other dog bones of later periods are found in Denmark. At the time when the flint knives were succeeded by weapons of bronze, a large dog existed, and at the time when iron came into use there was a still larger one, presenting certain differences. Probably the oldest dog of which there is any dependable record is one which was partially domesticated in Switzerland

tion with man than if he were hunting on during the Lake dwelling period. It some his own account. Thus mutual benefit would result in some kind of tacit agreement of partnership, and through the generations the wild wolf or jackal would gradually become gentler, more docile, and tractable, and the dreaded enemy of the. Flock develop into the trusted guardian of the fold.

Convincing evidence of this friendship between the Canidce and primitive man is to be found in the remains left by the ancient cave-dwellers,where the half-petrified bones of men and dogs are mingled ; and the prehistoric savages of Northern Europe have left many such silent mementoes of the past which enable us to gain an insight into the conditions of their daily life and their domestication of animals. In the

what resembled our Hound and Setter, and in the formation of its skull it was equally remote from the wolf and the jackal. Thus we see that at a time when our ancestors were living in caves or on pile-supported dwellings in a condition of civilisation akin to that of barbaric races to be found in the present day, the dog was already systematically kept and improved by selection.

If these fossil deposits were not sufficient to prove that the earliest human beings of whom we have any trace had subjected the dog to their companionship, further evidence is given in the rude, untutored drawings which the men of the so-called Reindeer period inscribed upon the imperishable rocks as records of heroic deeds and adventures. Most of these rock inscriptions, which for thousands of years have been laid bare to the ravages of the northern climate, are representations of ships and boats, with figures of men and animals, and in many of them are to be found tracings of a small quadruped in which canine characteristics are readily recognisable. In one such example, discovered at Bohuslan, on the shores of the Cattegat, there can be distinguished several figures of dogs. One seems to be minding a horse, another is being led by a man, and a third appears to be chasing a reindeer. Figures of dogs are also to be found engraved by prehistoric artists, who have striven to record their impressions on tablets of bone and horn.

Evidence exists to show that a tame species of CanidcB was possessed by the ancient inhabitants of North and South America, while dog worship in Peru was an earlier cult even than the sun worship practised by the Mexicans. In nearly all parts of the world, indeed, traces of an indigenous dog family are found, the only exceptions being the West Indian Islands, Madagascar, the eastern islands of the Malayan Archipelago, New Zealand, and the Polynesian Islands, where there is no sign that any dog, wolf, or fox has existed as a true aboriginal animal. In the ancient Oriental lands, and generally among the early Mongolians, the dog remained savage and neglected for centuries, prowling in packs, gaunt and wolf-like, as it prowls to-day through the streets and under the walls of every Eastern city. No attempt was made to allure it into human companionship or to improve it into docility. It is not until we come to examine the records of the higher civilisations of Assyria and Egypt that we discover any distinct varieties of canine form.

Assyrian sculptures depict two such, a Greyhound and a Mastiff, the latter described in the tablets as " the chained-up, mouth-opening dog " ; that is to say, it was used as a watch-dog ; and several varieties are referred to in the cuneiform inscriptions preserved in the British Museum. The Egyptian monuments of about 3000

B. C. present many forms of the domestic dog, and there can be no doubt that among the ancient Egyptians it was as completely a companion of man, as much a favourite in the house, and a help in the chase, as it is among ourselves at present. In the City of Cynopolis it was reverenced next to the sacred Jackal,* and on the death of a dog the members of the household to which he had belonged carefully shaved their whole bodies, and religiously abstained from using the food, of whatever kind, which happened to be in the house at the time. Among the distinct breeds kept in Egypt there was a massive wolf-dog, a large, heavily-built hound with drooping ears and a pointed head, at least two varieties of Greyhound used for hunting the gazelle, and a small breed of terrier or Turnspit, with short, crooked legs. This last appears to have been regarded as an especial household pet, for it was admitted into the living rooms and taken as a companion for walks out of doors. It was furnished with a collar of leaves, or of leather, or precious metal wrought into the form of leaves, and when it died it was embalmed. Every town throughout Egypt had its place of interment for canine mummies.

It is in connection with the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt that the first mention of the dog in the Bible occurs, and one is led to the inference that the detestation with which the Hebrews regarded the dog may have been due to its being an object of adoration to the Egyptians. This reason alone can hardly have had much weight, however, in view of the fact that the Hebrews themselves kept oxen animals which were regularly worshipped by the Egyptians ; but possibly there were other more cogent reasons why the dog was not appreciated in Palestine. It may be that the Israelites had the misfortune only to know this friend of man in the character of a pariah and a scavenger that fed on offal and the bodies of people who died in the streets (i Kings xiv. N). Certain it is that in both the Old and New Testaments the dog is commonly spoken of with scorn and contempt as an " unclean beast." " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ? " was a phrase in which the ancient Jew expressed his abhorrence of dirty work. Dogs seem to have been bought and sold, but the price paid for a dog was not acceptable as an offering to God (Deut. Xxiii. 18). Even the familiar reference to the Sheepdog in the Book of Job " 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 " is not without a suggestion of contempt, and it is significant that the only biblical allusion to the dog as a recognised companion of man occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (v. 16).

The pagan Greeks and Romans had a kindlier feeling for dumb animals than had the Jews. Their hounds, like their horses, were selected with discrimination, bred with care, and held in high esteem, receiving pet names ; and the literatures of Greece and Rome contain many tributes to the courage, obedience, sagacity, and affectionate fidelity of the dog. The Phoenicians, too, were unquestionably lovers of the dog, quick to recognise the points of special breeds. In their colony in Carthage, during the reign of Sardanapalus, they had already possessed themselves of the Assyrian Mastiff, which they probably exported to far-off Britain, as they are said to have exported the Water Spaniel to Ireland and to Spain.

II. The Ferine Strain.

It is a significant circumstance when we come to consider the probable origin of the dog that there are indications of his domestication at such early periods by so many savage peoples in different parts of the world. As we have seen, dogs were more or less subjugated and tamed by primitive man in the Neolithic or Newer Stone age, by the Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, as also by the ancient barbaric tribes of the western hemisphere. The important question now arises : Had all these dogs a common origin in a definite parent stock, or did they spring from separate and unrelated parents ? Did the great Neolithic dog of Northern Europe, the Sheepdog of Job's time, the Greyhounds, the Wolfhounds, and Lapdogs of Egypt and Nineveh, the Mastiffs of Carthage, the divinely honoured animals of Peru, and the pariah dogs of the Far East, descend from a single pair, or have various wild and indigenous species of Canidce been methodically tamed, and by degrees converted into true domestic dogs by these different peoples in different parts of the world ?

Half a century ago it was believed that all the evidence which could be brought to bear upon the problem pointed to an independent origin of the dog. It was assumed that, as distinct breeds existed in remote periods of the world's history, +1 e was actually no time prior to tho^ jfeitc. Is for him to have been evolved from a savage ancestor such as a wolf or a jackal, and that it was highly unlikely that a number of isolated primitive races of men should have separately tamed different wild Cani&a. Youatt, one of the best authorities on the dog, writing in 1845, argued that " this power of tracing back the dog to the very earliest periods of history, and the fact that he then seemed to be as sagacious, as faithful, and as valuable as at the present day, strongly favours the opinion that he was descended from no inferior and comparatively worthless animal ; and that he was not the progeny of the wolf, the jackal, or the fox, but was originally created, somewhat as we now find him, the associate and friend of man."

When Youatt wrote, most people believed that the world was only six thousand years old, and that species were originally created and absolutely unchangeable. Lyell's discoveries in geology, however, overthrew the argument of the earth's chronology and of the antiquity of man, and Darwin's theory of evolution entirely transformed the accepted beliefs concerning the origin of species and the supposed invariability of animal types. But prior to Youatt's time the structural similarity between the dog and the other Canidce had been discussed by naturalists, and since it was obvious that the tame domestic animal did not precede its wild relative in the order of descent, it was argued that the wolf, the fox, and the jackal were the probable ancestors of the dog. Buffon, the great French naturalist, discussed this question in detail, but came to the conclusion that the dog had never been really a wild animal, and that the Sheepdog was the original progenitor of all modern varieties. Bell believed that the wolf was the parent, and there are still many who cling to the opinion that all dogs are lineally descended from the fox, while there are some naturalists who discover an affinity between the dog and the bear. None of these views, however, takes a sufficiently wide survey of the whole subject to be worthy of much consideration.

The fanciful theory that the wolf and the dog are alike the lineal descendants of the bear may at once be briefly dismissed. It is true that there is some correspondence in the dentition of the genus Cam's and the genus Ursus, that the pupil of the bear's eye is round like that of the dog, and that the persistent black and tan colouring which Darwin was perplexed to account for in the dog is present in a marked degree in most of the bears ; but no argument can account for the disparity that the anatomy of the bear is different from that of the dog family, that the period of gestation in the bear is five months instead of nine weeks, and that bear cubs are born naked and remain so for a month.

The general superficial resemblance between the fox and many of our dogs, such as the Chow-Chow, the Pomeranian, some of the terriers, and even the Collie, might well excuse the belief in a relationship. Gamekeepers are often very positive that a cross can be obtained between a dog fox and a terrier bitch ; but cases in which this connection is alleged must be accepted with extreme caution. The late Mr. A. D. Bartlett, who was for years the superintendent of the Zoological Gardens in London, studied this question with minute care, and as a result of experiments and observations * he positively affirmed that he had never met with one well-authenticated instance of a hybrid dog and fox. Mr. Bartlett's conclusions are incontestable. However much in appearance the supposed dog-fox may resemble the fox, there are certain opposing characteristics and structural differences which entirely dismiss the theory of relationship.

These may be tabulated as follows :

• Eye pupils. Nose and muzzle.
• Month.
• Ears.
• Coat.
• Legs, feet, and toes.
• Tail.
• Fox. Vertical.
• Fox Sharp, and the lips thin, but whiskers well developed.
• Fox. Canine teeth long, slender, sharp, and much curved. Thegape of the fox is larger than that of a dog of similar size.
• Fox. Colour, outside, black ; inside, thickly coated with long, stiff hair.
• Fox. Hair long, points harsh, lower half soft and the base dark coloured, thick woolly undercoat.
• Fox. Slender, long, and with thin and usually sharp claws standing forward.
• Fox. A round, woolly brush, reaching and touching the ground and terminating with a pendulous tuft.
• Dog. Circular.
• Dog. Rounded, with thick lips and few whiskers.
• Dog. Canine teeth stout, strong, rather short, not much curved.
• Dog. Colour, out-side, the same as the neck and back; inside, thinly edged with short hair.
• Dog. Hair usually of uniform colour to the base of the hair, although, in the Elkhound, for example, it is light at the base and dark at the points.
• Dog. Short, stout, and thick, blunt claws directed downward in the front feet.
• Dog. Somewhat flattened, never reaching the ground and terminating in a point.

One thing is certain, that foxes do not breed in confinement, except in very rare instances. The silver fox of North America is the only species recorded to have bred in the Zoological Gardens of London ; the European fox has never been known to breed in captivity. Then, again, the fox is not a sociable animal. We never hear of general appearance, structure, habits, instincts, and mental endowments that no difficulty presents itself in regarding them as being of one stock. There is, indeed, no definition framable which will include all the varieties of the domestic dog and exclude all the wild species none even which will include all the dogs properly.

Foxes uniting in a pack, as do the wolves, the jackals, and the wild dogs. Apart from other considerations, as Bartlett pointed out, a fox may be distinguished from a dog, without being seen or touched, by its smell. Xo one can produce a dog that has half the odour of Reynard, and this odour the dogfox would doubtless possess were its sire a fox-dog or its dam a vixen.

III. Dog and the Relationship with the Wolf and the Jackal.

Whatever may be said concerning the difference existing between dogs and foxes will not hold good in reference to dogs, wolves, and jackals. The wolf and the jackal are so much alike that the only appreciable distinction is that of size, and so closely do they resemble many dogs in

so called, both wild and tame, and at the same time exclude the wolf and the jackal. Wolves and jackals can be, and have repeatedly been, tamed. Domestic dogs can become, and again and again do become, wild, even consorting with wolves, interbreeding with them, assuming their gregarious habits, and changing the characteristic bark into a dismal wolf-like howl. The wolf and the jackal when tamed answer to their master's call, wag their tails, lick his hands, crouch, jump round him to be caressed, and throw themselves on their backs in submission. When in high spirits they run round in circles or in a figure of eight, with their tails between their legs. Their howl becomes a businesslike bark. They smell at the tails of other dogs and void their urine sideways, and lastly, like our domestic favourites, however refined and gentlemanly in other respects, they cannot be broken of the habit of rolling on carrion or on animals they have killed.*

This last habit of the domestic dog is one of the surviving traits of his wild ancestry, which, like his habits of burying

the St. Bernard and the miniature Black and Tan Terrier, and is perplexed in contemplating the possibility of their having descended from a common progenitor. Yet the disparity is no greater than that between the Shire horse and the Shetland pony, the Shorthorn and the Kerry cattle, or the Patagonian and the Pigmy ; and all bones or superfluous food, and of turning round and round on a carpet as if to make a bed for himself before lying down, go far towards connecting him in direct relationship with the wolf and the jackal.

The great multitude of different breeds of the dog and the vast differences in their size, points, and general appearance are facts which make it difficult to believe that they could have had a common ancestry. One thinks of the difference between the Mastiff and the Japanese Spaniel, the Deerhound and the fashionable Pomeranian, Dog breeders know how easy it is to produce a variety in type and size by studied selection.

In order properly to understand this question it is necessary first to consider the identity of structure in the wolf and the dog. This identity of structure may best be studied in a comparison of the osseous system, or skeletons, of the two animals, which so closely resemble each other that their transposition would not easily be detected.

The spine of the dog consists of seven vertebrae in the neck, thirteen in the back, seven in the loins, three sacral vertebrae, and twenty to twenty-two in the tail. In both the dog and the wolf there are thirteen pairs of ribs, nine true and four false. Each has forty-two teeth, the dental formula being : incisors 3 3 ~ 3 3 , canines HI, premolars *~ 4 4 , and molars I. They both have five front and four hind toes. Outwardly the common wolf has very

The coat of the wolf varies according to climate and latitude with respect to both its texture and colour. In the North it is long and thick longest on the belly and legs, bushy on the tail, and erect on the neck and sides, whilst in the South it is shorter and rougher. The colour is generally pale yellowish grey mingled with black, much the appearance of a large, bare-boned dog, and a popular description of the one would serve for the other. His tail, which is long, hangs over his haunches like that of the Esquimau dog, instead of being curled upward. Distinguishing characteristics are to be found in the lank body, the length of snout in proportion to the head, the sloping forehead, erect ears, and oblique eyes. Great stress is laid by some naturalists upon this obliquity of the wolf's eyes, but Dr. Kane, Lieutenant Peary, and other explorers in the far North, have stated that they have often observed this same form of eye among the dogs of their sledge teams.

Lighter and often whitish grey below. The forehead is whitish grey, the snout yellowish grey, always mingled with black, the lips whitish, and the cheeks yellowish, sometimes indistinctly striped.

The wolf's natural voice is a loud howl, but, as already stated, when confined with dogs he will learn to bark. Although he is carnivorous, he will also eat vegetables, and when sickly he will nibble grass. In the chase, a pack of wolves will divide into parties, one following the trail of the quarry, the other endeavouring to intercept its retreat, exercising a considerable amount of strategy, a trait which is exhibited by many of our sporting dogs and terriers when hunting in teams.

A further important point of resemblance between the Cam's lupiis and the Cam's familiaris lies in the fact that the period of gestation in both species is sixty-three days. There are from three to nine cubs in a wolf's litter, and these are blind for twenty-one days. They are suckled for two months, but at the end of that time they are able to eat half-digested flesh disgorged for them by their dam or even their sire.

We have seen that there is no authenticated instance of a hybrid between the dog and the fox. This is not the case with the dog and the wolf, or the dog and the jackal, all of which can interbreed. Moreover, their offspring are fertile. Pliny is the authority for the statement that the Gauls tied their female dogs in the woods that they might cross with wolves. The Esquimau dogs are not infrequently crossed with the grey Arctic wolf, which they so much resemble, and the Indians of America were accustomed to cross their half-wild dogs with the coyote to impart greater boldness to the breed. Tame dogs living in countries inhabited by the jackal often betray the jackal strain in their litters, and there are instances of men dwelling in lonely outposts of civilisation being molested by wolves or jackals following upon the trail of a bitch in season.

These facts lead one to refer to the familiar circumstance that the native dogs of all regions approximate closely in size, coloration, form, and habit to the native wolf of those regions. Of this most important circumstance there are far too many instances to allow of its being looked upon as a mere coincidence. Sir John Richardson, writing in 1829,* observed that " the resemblance between the North American wolves (Cam's lupus, var. Occidentalis) and the domestic dog of the Indians is so great that the size and strength of the wolf seems to be the only difference. I have more than once mistaken a band of wolves for the dogs of a party of Indians ; and the howl of the animals of both species is prolonged so exactly in the same key that even the practised ear of the Indian fails at times to discriminate between them."

As the Esquimau and Indian dogs resemble the North American wolf (C. Lupus), so the dog of the Hare Indians, a very different breed, resembles the prairie wolf (C. Latrans). Except in the matter of barking, there is no difference whatever between the black wolf-dog of the Indians of Florida and the wolves of the same country. The Chow-Chow bears a striking family likeness to some of the wolves of China, and there is also a close resemblance between some of the Indian pariah dogs and the Indian wolf. The same phenomenon is seen in many kinds of European dogs. The Shepherd Dog of the plains of Hungary is white or reddish-brown, has a sharp nose, short erect ears, shaggy coat, and bushy tail, and so much resembles a wolf that Mr. Paget, who gives the description, says he has known a Hungarian mistake a wolf for one of his own dogs. Many of the dogs of Russia, Lapland, and Finland are comparable with the wolves of those countries. Some of the domestic dogs of Egypt, both at the present day and in the condition of mummies, are wolf-like in type, and the dogs of Nubia have the closest relation to a wild species of the same region, which is only a form of the common jackal. Dogs, it may again be noted, cross with the jackal as well as with wolves, and this is frequently the case in Africa, as, for example, in Bosjesmans, where the dogs have a marked resemblance to the black-backed jackal (C. Mesomelas), which is a South African variety.

These circumstances are so significant that they leave only one difficulty to be settled, and that is the question of voice. It has long been believed that the one incontrovertible argument against the lupine relationship of the dog is the fact that all domestic dogs bark, while all wild Canidce express their feelings only by howls. But the difficulty here is not so great as it seems, since we know that jackals, wild dogs, and wolf pups reared by bitches readily acquire the habit. On the other hand, domestic dogs allowed to run wild forget how to bark, while there are some which have not yet learned so to express themselves. Sir Harry Johnston gives evidence of this in his description of the tame dogs in the neighbourhood of the Zambesi. The passage is not too long to quote :

" The dog of Central Africa is the usual small fox -coloured pariah with erect ears and jackal-like head. The tail, which is generally long and smooth, is sometimes carried over the back. Sometimes the colour is mottled brown and white, or black and white. Still, where these piebald tints are found there is reason to suspect intermixture with foreign breeds, the usual African type of the pariah dog being a uniform fox colour. I have sometimes fancied I saw native hunters using a smaller breed of dogs with short legs for terrier work, but I have never actually ascertained that there is such a breed. Dogs are used a good deal for hunting small game. I have never heard of their being employed, as in South Africa, to tackle big animals and bring them to bay. This African dog has a certain attachment to its native master, but it is always suspicious, furtive, and cringing. Europeans they dread strangely, but, though they growl angrily, they are much too cowardly to bite. They have one good negative quality : they cannot bark."*

It is a reasonable inference that the faculty of barking is acquired and improved by association with civilised man, who has certainly encouraged and cultivated it. The Romans appreciated the sonorous barking of their hounds, as witness Virgil's reference :

So that the hounds might be " matched in mouths like bells, each under each." Henry II., in his breeding of hounds, is said to have been careful not only that they should be fleet, but also " well-tongued and consonous " ; and even so late as the reign of Queen Anne it was usual to match the voices of a pack. Thus we read in the Spectator that " Sir Roger, being at present too old for fox hunting, to keep himself in action, has disposed of his Beagles and got a pack of Stop-hounds. What these want in speed, he endeavours to make amends for by the deepness of their mouths and the variety of their notes, which are suited in such manner to each other, that the whole cry makes up a complete concert."

Almost extinct now is this old care to harmonise the song of the pack. But we should not like our hounds to be without music, and we have a healthy contempt for the watch-dog who will not bark. Were we to breed a strain of wolves and jackals in our kennels, we should try to teach them to bark also, and would probably succeed.

The presence or absence of the habit of barking cannot, then, be regarded as an argument in deciding the question concerning the origin of the dog. This stumbling block in the discussion consequently disappears, leaving us in the position of agreeing with Darwin, whose final hypothesis was formulated in the generalisation that " it is highly probable that the domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good species of wolf (C. Lupus and C. latrans), and from two or three other doubtful species of wolves namely, the European, Indian, and North African forms ; from at least one or two South American canine species ; from several races or species of jackal ; and perhaps from one or more extinct species " ; and that the blood of these, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic breeds.

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