The dog may be said to be the only animal whose fidelity will stand the proof; who always knows his master, and even his master's friends; who points out a stranger as soon as he arrives; who understands his own name, and knows the voices of the domestics; who has not confidence in himself alone; who, when he has lost his master, will call upon him by his cries and lamentations; who in long journeys, and which he may have travelled but once, will remember his way, and find out the roads; in fine, the dog is the only animal whose talents are evident, and whose education is always successful. Of all animals he is also the most susceptible of impressions, most easily modified by moral causes, and most subject to alterations caused by physical influences. The temperament, faculties, and habits of his body vary prodigiously, and even his form is not uniform. In the same country one dog is very different from another, and the species seems quite changed in different climates; from thence spring the mixture and variety of races which are so great that it is impossible to enumerate or describe them. From the same causes arise that great variety so visible in the height, figure, length of the snout, form of the head, length and direction of the ears and tail, colour, quality and quantity of hair, &c. so that there seems to remain nothing constant in these animals but the conformity of their internal organization, and the faculty of procreating together. And as those which differ most from each other can intermix and produce fertile individuals, it is evident that dogs, however greatly they may vary, nevertheless constitute but one species. But what is most difficult to ascertain in this numerous variety of races, is the character of the primitive stock. How are we to distinguish the effects produced by the influence of the climate, food, &c.? How discover the changes which have resulted from an intermixture among themselves, either in a wild or domestic state? All these causes will, in time, alter the most permanent forms, and the image of nature does not preserve its purity in those objects of which mankind have had the management. Those animals which are independent and can chuse for themselves both their food and climate, are those which best preserve their original impressions, and we may believe the most ancient of their species are the most faithfully represented by their descendants. But those which mankind have subdued, transported from climate to climate, whose food, customs, and manners of living he has changed, may also be those which have changed most in their forms; and it is a fact that there are more varieties among domestic than wild animals; and as among domestic animals the dog is most attached to man, lives also the most regularly, and who possesses sentiments to render him docile, obedient, susceptible of all impressions, and submissive to all restraints, it is not astonishing that he should be that in which