Permanence and Evolution

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Dog. It is admitted by Darwin that the dog has in all probability descended from more than one wild stock. In many countries the dogs are indistinguishable from the wolves or other wild canines?dogs are often kept by savages who have no other domestic animals; many wild canines are very tameable, and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Dog. It is admitted by Darwin that the dog has in all probability descended from more than one wild stock. In many countries the dogs are indistinguishable from the wolves or other wild canines?dogs are often kept by savages who have no other domestic animals; many wild canines are very tameable, and no argument can be drawn from the alleged sterility of hybrid wolf-dogs kept in close confinement. But besides these there are other breeds, the most common in Europe, very distinct from any known wild animal. Darwin says that they are unnatural forms, and that no one has been bold enough to maintain that they existed in a state of nature; but seeing how true they breed, I do not see why the principal and best marked (the greyhound, the mastiff, the terrier, the spaniel, etc.) should not have so existed, and the others have been formed by crossingbetween them, and very likely the principal races may have existed ab initio in various sub- races. It is said that in the last century an entirely new foxhound was raised, but it is added it is believed that this was done by a cross with the greyhound. An able writer believes that English greyhounds are the improved descendants of Scotch; the pointer also is supposed to have come from Spain, and is not like any dog found there now. Not much can be inferred from these facts and suppositions. Some breeds are said to have been improved by simple selection; later on we shall have a better opportunity of inquiring the meaning of this. It is said that European dogs in India uncrossed grow like the native cur, chiefly it appears in being lanky, but as it is also said that they will not continue to live and breed there, it appears that the phenomena are really those of un- healthiness. chapter{{Section 4The Cat. About the ...