all Ms migrations to distant regions of the earth, and has suffered from
the same injustice which ignorance metes to his lord. The wise Ulysses
has been ruthlessly referred to a consanguineous origin with the Papuan
and the Hottentot; and the noble animal that died from joy on recognizing
his master (when all Ithaca had forgotten the twenty years’
wanderer), is left to choose a descent from the savage wolf or the
abject jackal, and must perforce share its parentage with
“ Mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And eur of low degree.”
The monuments of Egypt have also shed new light upon the historical
antiquity of both men and dogs, showing that the different races of
each were as distinct 5000 years ago as they are to-day; and we now
propose to inquire whether geology does not confer upon dogs a still
more ancient origin.
Pew questions in the history of fossil animals are more difficult to
solve than that of dogs; for the differences between skeletons of the
dog, the wolf, and the fox, are so trifling as to be almost undistinguish-
able. Indeed, some perceive no difference between them except in
point of size. Consequently, when we meet with a fossil of the dog
species, we are at a loss whither to refer it ; and so strong are vulgar
prejudices against the antiquity of everything immediately associated
with man, that it is almost certain to be called a wolf, a fox, a jackal,
or anything else, sooner than a common dog;
It does not appear that any canidse have yet been found in the
oolite, the earliest position of mammal remains; they are rare in the
tertiary strata, and are chiefly met with in the caVes of the pliocene,
in the drift, and the alluvium.
Owen says that fossil hones and teeth extant in caves, and their association
with other remains of extinct species of mammalia found in
the same state, carry back the existence of the canis lupus in Great
Britain to a period anterior to the deposition of the superficial drift.
In the famous Kirkdale cave, Dr. Buckland discovered hones of a
fossil canis associated with those of tigers, bears, elephants, the rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, and other animals which Cuvier pronounced to
belong to extinct species. Fossil bones of a species of canis, similarly
associated with extinct animals, turned up in the cave of Paviland,
in Glamorganshire; and the Oreston cavern furnished other examples.
In all these cases it was difficult to designate the species of canis the
fossils belonged to, and the Dog was never allowed the benefit of the
doubt.
Cuvier, Daubenton and De Blainville inform us, that the shades of
difference in Canine skeletons are so slight, that distinctions are often
more marked between two individual dogs, or two wolves, than between
the various species.. But, in spite of these difficulties, recognizable
remains of the true dog,, canis fam ilia r is, have been frequently obtained.
Dr. Lund discovered fossil dogs larger than those now living,
in the' cave of Lagoa Santa, in Brazil; associated, as we have elsewhere
stated, with an immense variety of extinct species of animals,
and in a position whose geological antiquity cannot be, doubted, i In
tMs case the dog was partner with an extinct monkey; and a similar
association has been found in a stratum of marl, surmounted by compact
limestone, in the department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees.
Here the bones of a true dog were found, in company with the reliquiae
of not less than thirty mammiferous quadrupeds; including
three species of rhinoceros, a large anaplotherium, three species of
deer, a huge edentate, antelopes, and a species of monkey about three
feet high. This fact is the more interesting, because fossil monkeys
are almost as rare as fossil men in the fauna of the tertiary era; and,
until recently, their existence was quite as strenuously denied. In
the catalogue of the casts of Indian fossils, recently presented to the
Boston Society of Hatural History by the East India Company, we
find two crania of canine animals from the Sivalik Hills, but have
no information as to their species.
Dr. Schmerling has described several fossils of the true dog, which
evidently belonged to two distinct varieties, notably differing from each
other in size, as well as from the wolf and fox, whose bones, together
with those of bears, hyenas, and other animals, reposed in the
same locality. Cuvier, speaking of the bones of a fossil animal of
the. genus canis, found in the cave of Gaylenreuth, says that they
resemble the dog more than the wolf, and that they are in the same
condition with those of the hyenas and tigers associated with them:
“ they have the same color, the same consistence, the same envelop,
and they evidently date from, the same epoch.” ■ Cuvier does not positively
declare these remains to he those of the dog: he observes the
caution which he exhibited, in 1824, when asked whether human
bones had yet been discovered and proved to be coeval with those of
extinct mammalia — “ P a s encore," was his simple reply.
In the quarries of Montmartre, Cuvier found the lower jaw of a
species of canis, differing from that of any living species, and which
we have the right to say belonged to an extinct species of dog.
M. Marcel de Serres has described two species of dogs from Lunel
Yieil. One he supposed to resemble the pointer, and the other was
much smaller. The caves of Lunel Yieil are situated in a marine-
tertiary limestone. In some dogs, the frontal elevation of the skull
exceeds that of the wolf, and this characteristic is useful as a distinctive
mark. The skull of a small variety of dog, ‘with this mark well