viz., where dogs, becoming wild, return to a state of nature, they
bave, in tbe course of time, resumed very different types ; say, shepherd’s
dog, Danish dog, grey-hound, terrier, and so on. “ In other
words, they constantly tend to recur to that primitive type which is most
dominant in their physical constitution ; and it is remar Jcable, that in
the Old World this restored type is never the wolf, although it is sometimes
a lupine dog, owing to the cause just mentioned.”’
Where opposite types of dogs are bred together, and their hybrid
progeny becomes again intermingled, all sorts of mongrel, degenerate,
or deformed varieties arise ; such as pugs, shocks, spaniels, &c. ;
which Cuvier calls “ the most degenerate productions and they are
found, by experience, “ to possess a short and fleeting existence the
common lot of all types of modern origin.” Such deformities arise
in nature everywhere. There is one instance of dwarfish canine malformation,
4000 years old, in Lepsius’s plate442 of the XiLth dynasty ;
and embalmed monstrosities of other genera were found by Passalacqua.
Among North American Indian dogs, says Dr. Morton, “ the original forms are very
few, and closely, allied ; whence it happens that these grotesque varieties* never appear.
Neither have they any approximation to that marked family we call hounds; and this fact
is the more remarkable, since the Indian dogs are employed in the same manner of hunting
as the hounds of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Yet, this similarity of employment has caused
no analogy of exterior form. No varieties like those so familiar in Europe, spring up inter se
among them. They are as homogeneous as wolf-races, from whom they are descended ;
and Dr. Richardson quotes Theodat to show that the common Indian dog has not materially
changed during two hundred and twenty years: Again, the same remark applies to the
indigenous aguara, alco, and 'techicH dogs of Mexico and South America, which, before their
admixture with European breeds, conformed to the types or species from which they sprung,
without branching into the thirty varieties of Button, or the sixty of Brown.”
In the words of Jacquinot, whose “Anthropologie” 443 is the ablest
work on Man yet put forth in the French language, let me close these
few, out of infinite, analogies in the animal kingdom, which space
confines to the foregoing paragraphs on dogs. “ Il est indubitable
que les variétés du chien appartiennent à plusieurs types primitifs.
The facts above detailed establish, conclusively, that Hybridity is
not a “ unit;” or, iu other words, they prove that different degrees
of affinity exist in Nature, to be taken into account in all inquiries
into the prolificacy of diverse “ species.” Equally certain is it, that
climate and domestication affect animal species differently : some
of them becoming variously modified in form and color — as horses,
cattle, goats, sheep, fowls, pigeons, &c. ; while others, to considerable
extent, resist such physical influences — like the ass, the buffalo, the
elk, the reindeer, pea-fowls, guinea-fowls, and so forth.
Now, it is equally singular and true, that these identical species,
whence Natural History deduces veiy strong reasons for believing
them to be derived from many primitive stocks, are those which
undergo the greatest changes; whereas, on the contrary, other species,
which equally good reasons induce us to regard as simple—that
is, derived from one primitive stock—are precisely those in which the
experience of ages chronicles the smallest alteration. This law (if it
be such) seems to apply not merely to the lower animals, but also to
mankind. In America, for example, where the autocthonous population
has been isolated, very little variety is found among Indian
tribes; whereas, in Europe, Asia, and Africa (more particularly in
and around Egypt and India), we encounter infinite diversities among
human beings, manifested in every form and by all colors.
The perplexing anomalies that beset this investigation may be
illustrated by the following resume, in which I have incorporated
some very interesting facts, published by Dr. Alexander Harvey in
the'London Monthly Journal of the Medical Sciences : 444
Instances are sufficiently common among the lower animals where the offspring exhibit,
more or less distinctly, in addition to the characters of the male by which they were begotten,
the peculiarities also of a male by which their mother had at some former period
been impregnated :<,%*- or, as it has been otherwise expressed, where the peculiarities of a
male animal, that had once held fruitful intercourse with a female, are more or less distinctly
recognized in the offspring of subsequent connections of that female with other
males. It is interesting to inquire whether this is a general law in animal physiology; and
if it be, whether, and how far, it is modified in its operation in different animals, and under
different circumstances: and it is of still more immediate interest to us to inquire whether,
or not, the fact extends also to the human species. The facts bearing upon this subject
may be most conveniently noticed—1st, in relation to the lower animals; 2d, in relation to
the human species.
1. In the Brute Creation. — A young chestnut mare, seven-eighths Arabian, belonging to
the Earl of Morton, was covered in 1815 by a quagga, which is a species of wild ass from
Africa, and marked somewhat like a zebra. The mare was covered but once by the zebra;
and, after a pregnancy of eleven months and four days, gave birth to a hybrid which had
distinct marks of the quagga, in the shape of its head, black bars on the legs and shoulders,
&o. In 1817, 1818, and 1821, the same mare, which had become the property of Sir
Gore Ouseley, was covered by a very fine black Arabian horse, and produced successively
three foals, all of which bore unequivocal marks of the quagga. A mare belonging to Sir
Gore Ouseley was covered by a zebra, and gave birth to a striped hybrid. The year following
the same mare was covered by a thorough-bred horse, and the next succeeding year
by another horse. Both the foals thus produced were striped: i.e., partook of the characters
of the zebra. It is stated by Haller, and also by Becker, that when a mare has
had a mule by an ass, and afterwards a foal by a horse, “the foal exhibits traces of the ass.
We can ourselves vouch for the truth of similar facts. A vast number of mules are bred
in the United States, from the ass and the mare; and we have frequently seen colts from
horses, out of mares, which had previously had mules; many of them were distinctly
marked by the ass.
In these cases, the mares were covered in the first instance by animals of a different
species from themselves. But cases are recorded of mares covered in every instance by
horses, but by different horses on different occasions, where the offspring partook of the
characters of the horse by which the impregnation was first effected. Thus, in several
foals in the royal stud at Hampton Court, got by the horse Acteon, there were unequivocal
marks of the horse Colonel—the dams of these foals had been bred from by Colonel the