No one can produce
a dog that has half the odour of Reynard, and this odour the dog-fox
would doubtless possess were its sire a fox-dog or its dam a vixen.

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 general appearance, structure, habits,
instincts, and mental endowments that no difficulty presents itself
in regarding them as being of one stock. 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 business-like 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 bones or
superfluous food, and of turning round and round on a carpet as if
to make a nest 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, 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 Pygmy; and all dog breeders kno