Farm & Garden Produce; A Treasury of Information

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857. Excerpt: ... 101 DOGS. CHAPTER XXI. The domestic dog--The shepherd's dog--The mastiff--The cur. I Shall make but a few remarks on the dog kind generally, and such only as lead directly to the consideration of the two especial farm species, and the degenerate cur. The Shepherd's dog has been considered by Buffon the origin of all dogs. That celebrated naturalist constructed a genealogical tree, intended to show the different races of dogs, and also their varieties, arising from degeneracies occasioned by particular climates, and from the intermixture of those races. The Shepherd's dog is the root of the tree. In apland, or other very cold climates, he is of a small size and very ugly; but in less rigorous northern countries, and where the people are somewhat more advanced in civilization than the Laplanders, this dog, as if partly taking his tone from his human companions, is more gentle and intelligent. The figure of the dog is, however, unaltered in those climates: in each his ears are erect, his hair thick and long, and his appearance wild. The same dog brought into temperate climates and among perfectly civilized people would gradually lose the wild look and thick long hair, and gradually acquire a different figure. The varieties and sub-varieties of dogs which have arisen through the intermixture of races from different countries and climates, even supposing that they did originate from the so-called Shepherd's dog, are endless. Many of the best or most beautiful sorts are mongrels, produced by the mixture of two pure races; and many are what are termed double mongrels, proceeding from the union of a pure race with a mongrel. The Mastiff has proceeded from the Bull-dog and Irish Greyhound, the largest of all dogs, and anciently used in the chase of the wolf. The M...